


Natasha

by Kathar



Series: Chris [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Cruise Ships, Drowning, M/M, Memory Alteration, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strike Team Delta, additional warnings in chapter and end notes, aftermath of disaster, floods, once-and-future Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, past Clint Barton/ Natasha Romanov - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-13 13:45:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 89,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9126322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: A little over three years ago, Clint Barton had an affair with a woman named Tasha. It ended badly. He’s about to meet her again, as is Phil Coulson, his commanding officer-- and other ex-lover. That’s going end badly, too.And then Nick Fury is going to put them on a team together. Just for kicks.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Key parts of this story revolve around two people with significant past trauma discussing said trauma. Each chapter will carry relevant trigger warnings; please check the end notes if you need trigger warnings for the fic as a whole. No one is in danger of significant fresh trauma within this story. 
> 
> My eternal thanks to [Faeleverte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte), who has been a champion for this series from the start. That’s honestly too small a word to cover the extent to which this series and story reflects her encouragement, commentary, concrit, and love. 
> 
> I can’t too highly praise LauraKaye’s beta work on this. Without her pushing, prodding, and pulling the plot out of me, asking “why” at every paragraph, this story simply would not work. And that’d be a crying shame, since it’s nearly 85,000 words.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint's on a rooftop, Natasha's in his sights, and Phil is half a world away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings in this chapter.

Of all the rooftops in the world, Clint Barton thought bitterly, why the hell did he have to end up on this one?

Granted, he’d been on objectively worse rooftops. This one was slippery and cold, yes, but it wasn’t threatening to crumble beneath him. He’d been on objectively much better ones, too; sometimes it seemed like he'd spent half his life on roofs ending other peoples’ lives, since his first time on top of a Pepto-pink warehouse in Miami. Anyway, he’d been on enough of them to know that it wasn’t always the rooftop itself that mattered, it was what you were  _ doing _ there.

And whose life you were ending-- or saving.

That first time out, Clint’d killed a couple people who had probably deserved it, and unexpectedly saved the life of another. That  _ other _ had been Phillip, a soldier he’d taken to bed for the week and who had turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since then, Clint’d killed a lot of people.  He’d saved a few, too, while going from mercenary to SHIELD-- but he’d also learned that time looped more than he’d thought, and it’d thrown him a hell of a curve this time.

Because for the second time in his life, Clint found himself facing someone from his past in the last place he’d expected to see them, and he was pretty sure it meant the end of everything he’d managed to build in the past few years.

The first time, should anyone ask, had been Phillip as well-- or rather, Agent Phil Coulson, who’d been leading Clint on ops for two years before Clint had made the connection between his past lover and present commanding officer. And just to show that the universe had a really terrible sense of humor, or that Phillip had a really bad habit of being in the wrong places, he was on the other end of a comms unit from Clint now, his voice coming even and sure over the comm in Clint's ear even though he himself was half a world away in an operations room at SHIELD’s HQ-- and likely all warm and cozy.

Clint, meanwhile, was stuck on a slimy wet rooftop with dead leaves and mildew in the cracks of the parapet and drizzle dampening everything, and facing down exactly the wrong person on the other end of his bow and arrow. Wasn’t this what he’d been afraid of, when he’d refused Phillip’s offers to find him an organization, way back in Miami? That he’d end up being given orders he didn’t think he could take, make ties he couldn’t afford to keep? He’d gotten soft since SHIELD had given him a job, that’s what it was. Soft and stupid and believing like there was a place he actually belonged-- and right now he felt so pathetic he just wanted it to go away,  just wanted to go  _ home _ .

Home was also a stupid concept, one he never should’ve gotten used to. Back before SHIELD, he’d tried to convince himself that home was where his bow and arrow was. And it’d worked, until a girl named Tasha had come and fucked it all up. Long legged, languorous, fucking  _ deadly _ , so goddamn good to him, she had burned through his life hot and bright and left him in ashes.

Whatever she hadn’t burnt, he’d lost in the flood, and that’d driven Clint into the arms of Jasper Sitwell, Agent of SHIELD-- who might as well have had  _ Exit Here _ stamped all over his shiny forehead. 

So in a way it was Tasha’s own damn fault that Clint was here now on a sodden rooftop in Budapest, adjusting his scope and hoping against hope that it wasn't going to show him what he thought it was. And it was only appropriate that he had Agent Coulson on the other end of the comms; Phillip of the broad shoulders, the only other person left from Clint’s past. 

Clint'd never really believed in deja vu either, at least not ‘till now. Anyway that wasn’t quite right; this wasn't a premonition, just history repeating. Different rooftop, different fight, same damn problem: someone in his sights that he couldn’t let die.

No matter what she’d done to him, Clint had known her, slept with her, watched her face go crinkly with frustration when people were being  _ stupid _ or needlessly cruel-- and he didn’t think he could do what SHIELD was going to ask of him.

“D’you still have eyes on her?” Jasper asked him, voice stuffy from the cold he’d had since the moment they set down in Hungary.

“Yes, I see her,” Clint replied, watching through his scope as maybe-Tasha moved away from the SUV and into the courtyard. She was nearly lost within a phalanx of assorted thugs-- ex-Stasi gone private, according to the briefing packet.

Of course, the briefing packet had turned out to be as full of lies as those brownies made from smooshed up black beans that Bobbi’d tried to get past him. It had, at least, managed to get the ex-Stasi goons right. It’d also correctly called that they were dealing with Leviathan-era fuckery-- shit left over from back before SHIELD even existed except as a twinkle in Howard Stark’s alcoholic eye. Somehow, though, it'd completely failed to mention that the goons were in the middle of a three-way territory dispute over who was gonna pick up the remains of a defunct relic of the Soviet spy machine. Admittedly, the organization in question had only just collapsed before Jasper and Clint had gotten to Hungary. Still, briefings were supposed to be  _ living _ documents, as both Coulson and Jasper had growled, the kinds of things that evolved as the situation did, not sometime in the distant future, maybe, if the analysts involved could be bothered.

Coulson and Jasper were both far more diplomatic than Clint.

What had been supposed to be a three-week observe-and-eliminate operation had turned into a three- _ month  _ affair with multiple double agents, two teams of backup, four scratched take-downs (to date), a couple SHIELD agents needing to be bailed out of jail (also to date), the complete destruction of three taxi cabs following two separate kidnapping attempts, and way more damp grungy Budapest roofs than Clint figured most of the city's pigeons experienced in their short, brutish lifetimes.

_ Simple _ , Coulson had said.  _ In and out in a few weeks. _ Just the thing, he hadn’t said but had certainly strongly implied, to give Clint a break after the mess that was the end of his and Bobbi’s relationship and to get Jasper's mind off his own breakup. (And possibly to give himself and Clint a little distance after the way Clint had regurgitated all his sorrows on Coulson’s shoulder in their last op together in Arizona.)

Well, Bobbi definitely wasn't the ex-lover on Clint’s mind now. And Tasha was in the process of upending his life as completely as she had the last time she’d walked into it. She hadn't even been on their radar until a minute ago, when she'd stepped out of the big unmarked SUV with an attentive escort of low-lives. They crowded her on all sides and she moved slowly, jerkily, with no flow and no grace. 

“It’s a match,” said Coulson in his ear. “That’s her. The Black Widow.”

Because of  _ course _ she was, Clint sighed to himself. He should have known, really, that his Tasha could never be a  _ lesser _ assassin. She had to be the very best-- though even now, through his scopes, she seemed so young he wondered how the hell it could be so.

“She still on the wanted list?” Jasper asked. 

“Second from the top,” Coulson replied. “With a kill order. Have you got a shot, Barton?”

It was unfair of him to wish Coulson was fucking  _ here _ , on this cold roof with him, hunched over a low parapet, scope in hand, seeing Tasha for real. Or hell, even down with Jasper in the van parked among so many other rusted-out hulks in the industrial yards that backed onto the building. That, actually, might be better. Having Phillip crouched down next to him, radiating body heat and security, dredging up stupid daydreams that he’d never get to match to reality, would’ve been a disaster. 

“I have,” Clint said, hoping his voice wasn’t going to be too strangled to be audible. “You want me to take her out now? Before the swap is complete?”

“No,” Coulson said, and Clint felt his knees unbunch at even this slight reprieve. Every second weighed on his gut now. “Wait as long as you have a lock on her; stick to the original plan as much as possible.”

“Sir,” Jasper sounded more than a little distracted, no doubt flipping between the feeds from the cameras they’d planted the day before and various other comm channels and data streams, trying to re-set his strike teams on the fly. “If we have to choose, what’s our priority?”

“Widow first. Farkas’s group just became secondary objectives.” Coulson sounded both apologetic and exhausted, even from half a world away. He’d been up for much of the last twelve hours with them. Unless he was even better at multitasking than he’d proven already, Clint doubted he’d taken more than fifteen minutes to eat or nap or piss during that time.

Jasper cursed in response to Coulson, something low and guttural ending in a kind of hack. He’d added some truly septic Magyar phrases to his profane collection during this unnatural disaster of an op.

Right now, Clint figured, the thing to do would be to keep quiet. Hope something happened to fuck it all up-- either new information would come in from SHIELD, or that Tasha would slip away from her friends-- or fall into a hole in the ground. Or maybe a tornado would hit; Clint’d take anything. 

What he should probably not do was open his mouth and draw his superiors’ attention to himself. That’d be the smart thing. Not fair to Coulson or Jasper, but less painful for everyone in the long run; he wouldn’t have to hear it in their voices when he destroyed their trust in him.

Yep, he should just keep his goddamn trap shut.

Clint felt his mouth open.

“Why is that?” he asked. Aw mouth,  _ no _ . 

“What’d you mean?” Jasper asked him.

“It took us three months to get this set up,” Clint said, “they’re gonna scatter and we’re gonna have to start all over again. Sir. Sirs.” 

As if the belated addition of formality was gonna make up for anything. Good job, Clint.

“She’s second from the top on our target of opportunity list, Barton.” Coulson said patiently. “She’s taken out a, uh, classified but rather large number of SHIELD operatives.”

“What, like, are we talking double digits, here?” Clint asked, very much in spite of himself. Problem was, on any other op, he wouldn’t have thought twice about asking-- and Coulson wouldn’t have thought twice about the fact that he was. Just another way SHIELD had made him let his guard down.

“That depends on whether or not Ipanema was her; we lost two quinjets and an entire strike team. The debate’s pretty vicious; the tactics look like her but the analysts can’t agree whether the plum lipstick was. Anyway,” Coulson cleared his throat, “that doesn’t matter. She’s either on the kill on sight list or wanted for questioning by pretty much every intelligence agency worth the name. We take her down-- we can pick up  Farkas’s group piecemeal if we have to.”

“SUVs coming in from the street. Two… four… five. Nearly go-time.” Jasper interrupted, sounding all official and neutral right up till the end, when he trailed off to mutter “if we’re gonna get to go at all.”

“I’m not exaggerating when I say she’s done us more damage than a handful of Cold War dinosaurs and their thrift store weaponry will ever do,” Coulson quieted him.

Clint reached down to test his fast line. Something in the way she moved was  _ screaming _ at him. And why was her escort so close? One of those assholes-- no, two-- had hands on her.  _ They had hands on the Black Widow _ . How the hell did the second-ranked threat to the Free World allow that? Or hell, how did  _ Tasha _ ?

“Lately?” he asked, feeling his voice thin.

“Say again?” Coulson asked.

“When’s the last time she went after SHIELD? Was it lately? Like… in the last three-four years?”

Clint was met by a very eloquent silence on the other end of the comms. It judged him, his inappropriate timing, his insubordinate questioning-- the longer it lasted the more Clint felt like he was back at the orphanage being loomed over by Sister Francita and three of her heftiest fellow nuns. 

Just before Clint’s courage failed, Jasper started talking in a clipped tone. His eye was still on the meeting and he narrated as the Russian contingent emerged from a set of low garages. Clint leaned back and adjusted himself a last time, readying his bow as he watched them from his perch.

_ Come on _ , he thought, not sure if he meant Coulson or Jasper or the Black Widow herself.  _ Come on, come on _ . Someone, any of them, give him a way out of this, a reason to go-- or not to.

“Are you… seeing this, Coulson?” Jasper snapped. “I don’t think she’s in control of the group at all. Barton?”

“Yep, I see it,” Clint said, as if he hadn’t been seeing it this entire fucking time, thank you very much. “I think they’ve drugged her. Sirs-- I don’t think….” he trailed off, uncertain.

_ You’re not paid to think _ , neither of them said, because neither of them were that type of asshole. Wouldn’t have crossed their minds if a million monkeys had sat in their brains with typewriters. 

It would have been so much easier if they  _ were _ assholes. If Jasper hadn’t taken Clint under his wing instead of chucking him out a window, back in the early days. If he hadn’t brought Clint gut bomb burgers every time Clint landed in the hospital.

Or if Coulson hadn’t half-carried Clint across the desert three months ago, while admitting he’d nearly killed himself once.

If Clint hadn’t owed them everything.

“They’re shaking hands… Labazanov’s handing over the briefcase… and… woah.” Jasper broke off, but it wasn’t like Clint couldn’t see everything-- and probably Coulson could, too, half a world away.

The Black Widow, splashed all over the big screens in the ops room, stumbling forward. They’d definitely drugged her; she looked uncoordinated and vulnerable as Farkas pushed her over into the mob of Russians.

She stumbled again, went down to one knee. Clint fell to both his own knees as a wave of nausea swept over him.

“She’s the weapon,” he whispered. “She’s the swap.”

“Evidently,” Coulson said. “And to answer your question, Barton: we can’t trace anything to her since… 2005. Spring.” 

He’d actually gone looking? In the middle of all this? 

Well all right, maybe Clint still had a shot.

“That’s years ago, sir,” he said, trying not to whine, “you don’t know what might have happened since. If she was with this Red Room group anymore, wouldn’t we have heard about it? She might’ve changed.”

Hell, Clint had changed so much in the past three years that be barely recognized himself. He’d quite literally been washed away in a flood. The man he’d been with Tasha-- the boy really, who’d been egotistical enough to call himself Hawkeye-- stared at him now, in his mind, from across the canyon that Katrina had carved through his past. 

He hadn’t thought he’d ever see the sad bastard again.

“Please. Sir,” he said-- whispered, breathed, whined, whatever. He was past paying attention to the tone of his own voice.

There was another heavy silence on the line.

Clint barely noticed it this time. 

_ She _ was down there.Tasha.  _ His _ Tasha-- still her even though her hair was red not chesnut, even though apparently she was and had always been the Black Widow, a legendary Red Room operative. 

Nothing Coulson’d told him could change the fact that she was still the woman who had taken the mercenary Hawkeye under her protection, had slept with him and killed with him and eaten breakfast sitting on his lap and left him alone with a dead scientist and a warehouse full of enemies in the spring of 2005. Not anymore than Coulson could change the fact that he’d been Phillip. Clint hadn’t wanted to see Tasha again, ever, and for a while he’d thought he hated her. But as it turned out, the weight of all those days and nights in her company was heavier than that last betrayal. 

He didn’t want to see her, no. Didn’t want her in his life again-- but he still couldn’t stand the thought of her dying.

Which had never been much concern before, seeing as even though he hadn’t known she was the Black Widow, he’d known she was the deadliest thing on two legs. She’d be all right.

Well just at the moment, Tasha was  _ not _ all right. 

She’d managed to get up off her knees, taking out the man who’d been holding a gun to her temple with a shoulder to the solar plexus. She was up, she was fighting-- and now  _ everyone _ was fighting, wasn’t that just typical-- but she wasn’t fighting like his Tasha was supposed to fight. His Tasha had made death a dance. If she was dancing now it was the chicken dance performed by a drunk uncle: effective mostly from shock value.

Tasha was drugged, alone, outnumbered-- he’d never seen her so fucking vulnerable. Maybe it was just a reflex from the past, but Clint felt his knees ache with the need to go to her.

“Is there something we should know?” Coulson asked over the line, calm even though his op was going to hell and his sniper was clearly about to have a breakdown.

“I…I know her.” Clint forced himself to breathe before he started to hyperventilate. “We used to work together, before. I don’t think she’s Red Room anymore. I can… I can get her to come in, especially if-- especially now.” 

A fucking lie, why the hell would she come in for him? But it was all he had. 

“You want her,” he pressed. “For questioning or for… for SHIELD. She’s the best. The absolute best. You know that. Sir, please? I can talk to her. She knows me. And I don’t think she did Ipanema; she’s a spring, she’d never wear plum anything.” 

He shut his mouth before he could babble more. He was just spitting into the wind anyway, probably. 

More silence from Coulson. There was no fucking  _ time _ for silence.

“She’s…” Clint swallowed. 

No, not Phillip-- not Coulson. It was too hard to tell him. Too much to explain. Jasper. Jas wouldn’t need an entire fucking prologue to get the point. He’d been the one to bring Clint in. What little he’d been willing to give SHIELD on Tasha he’d given Jasper, way back in the early days when Clint was just learning how to express his gratitude that Jas hadn’t yet stuck a wingtip up his behind. 

“Jas, she’s the one from… she’s the reason I was running when you found me.”

“I’d figured that out,” Jasper said. He did  _ not _ add “and she’s the one who screwed you over,” because he didn’t need to. “That’s not a recommendation.”

“I know,” Clint sighed. “But I think something must’ve changed. I mean, it’s worth a shot, at least.”

Even over the comm, he could hear Jasper’s brain working, probably tallying up how many burger nights it took to outweigh their entire intel and analysis division in his reckoning.

“Sir?” Jasper said at last, clearly deferring to Coulson. 

It was the last thing Clint wanted. Sure, Coulson was the commanding officer and the logical choice, but he was also Phillip, and Clint didn’t want this on  _ Phillip’s _ head. Wasn’t fair to Jas, of course, but Clint and Jas had a bond that… well a different kind of bond than…. Okay, he couldn’t stand the thought of Coulson saying no to him, not now, not with how much of his insecurities Clint’d poured out to Coulson in Arizona. 

He could have survived Jas doing it. Because if Jas could find a way to tell Clint yes, he always would. If he said no, well then, no was the only way it could be. Jas’s trust in Clint went far deeper than he’d ever deserved.

“Let me talk to Director Fury,” Coulson sighed at last, “hold one moment.” 

That didn't sound like a no. 

Why hadn't….

By all rights Coulson ought to have….

_ Clint _ would have….

Well no, Clint wouldn't, but Coulson….

“What?” Clint said, then promptly winced.  _ Don't question good fortune.  _

Coulson cleared his throat like he was about to answer, but Jasper broke in.

“Russians got reinforcements. Rate this is going, someone down there is going to do the job for us anyway.”

It was true; Tasha was clearly tired now and there had to be two dozen people still caught in the melee, beating on each other mostly but all too happy to gang up on her.

“ _ Help _ her,” Clint whispered.

“Hold for Fury, Clint,” Jasper growled.

Tasha went down, blood flying back from her nose as someone caught it with a knee.

“ _ No _ ,” Clint said, and loosed his first arrow.

On a pink rooftop in Miami, five years gone, Clint had taken out his marks and everyone else he could shoot, operating mostly on adrenaline and bravado. Then he’d muttered  _ Wile E Coyote time _ to himself and leapt from a building, everything in him driving him fast as he could fucking go towards a lone man caught between two rival gangs-- the same man that owned the voice that was now yelling in his ear.

Oh yeah, the universe clearly thought it was  _ really fucking funny. _

_ Barton _ , Coulson was calling, and  _ Clint _ , and-- worst of all--  _ Chris _ . Wait. Don’t.  _ Please _ don’t.

It was too late for yelling. Clint had already made his choice.

He’d shot about five of the goons around Tasha before he heard the door to the roof open and the crunch of gravel. He didn’t stop to find out which unlucky agent had been sent to bring him in-- he just leapt.

Clint was already in midair as Jasper’s curses filled his ears and already off his fast line and coming up into a run as new orders began to fly across the comms. Already out of SHIELD and into the melee, and his back was already pressed against Tasha’s, by the time anyone else could have reached him.

He hoped, as she stumbled against him, sending him straight into the butt of someone’s rifle, that at least-- 

The world went black.

___

  


“Coulson, just what the hell is going on here?”

Phil winced. Normally Director Fury at least attempted to keep his voice down when stalking into the control room while an op was in progress. Not that his bellow had made Phil miss anything vital; at the moment, both the in-ear coms and the on-screen visuals were an undifferentiated mass of meleeing human being. 

“A disaster.” The word tumbled out of Phil's brain and then his mouth before he could call it back, and the two ops agents seated at the consoles next to him turned and stared. 

Fury raised a dubious eyebrow at him, and Phil tried to grimace his apology. It wasn’t an actual SHIELD disaster, not yet-- there was still time to salvage the op and hopefully the operatives in question. At least there was time as long as the Agent-in-Charge managed to pull himself together-- any disaster at the moment was confined entirely to Phil himself.

“Sit-rep, please,” Fury said, in a tone that might be measuring out a lifeline or the rope for Phil to hang himself. 

Phil pressed his eyes closed for a moment, trying to gather himself long enough to give a coherent brief on the situation. One that didn’t devolve into a string of curses at himself for being so damn blind, at Jasper Sitwell for being so damn impulsive-- and at Clint Barton for being pig-headedly determined to go to hell and stuff them all in the handbasket with him.

“Apparently, the Black Widow was a… an old associate of Agent Barton,” Phil said. 

“I gathered that when you called me down here,” Fury said, still looking at Phil like he thought Phil might swoon. “And?”

“While you were on your way, she-- he-- Agent Barton determined the Black Widow was in danger of being killed-- before you could decide whether we should kill her or not-- and intervened.”

“Intervened?”

“Shot five hostiles then leapt off the building and got himself knocked out while protecting her,” Phil said, giving up the attempt at formality and just letting it go.

“He’s down?” Fury spun towards the screen, and Phil spun with him, trying hard to bite back the bile that was rising in his throat at memory of watching Barton crumple.

“Yes-- and so is she,” Phil continued, “although she stood over him long enough for Agent Sitwell to arrive on the scene.”

“Sitwell’s in that mess, too?” Fury snapped, waving at the feed. “No, nevermind, of course he is. Thick as goddamned thieves.”

“Exactly,” Phil replied. He wrapped his arms around himself, clutching at his elbows and letting his fingernails dig into the fine weave of his jacket. It was bad enough thinking about Barton going down-- if he let himself remember the wave of impotence that had washed over him when he’d heard Jasper shriek  _ Clint _ , running to the edge of the rooftop and staring down at the archer as he slid off the fast line and disappeared, Phil wasn’t going to be able to hold it together.

Jasper’d grabbed the line himself and slid down after, running off to possibly get himself killed and giving Phil a front-row, button-cam view of his headlong tumble. Doing what, if Phil was honest with himself, he would have done in a heartbeat if he had been there. What he could only watch from the comfort of the Hub’s well-appointed ops room, flickering larger-than-life on the big screen and garnished with Jasper’s vital stats.

Barton hadn’t had a video feed; only static crackled over his comm.

“Agent Sitwell,” Phil forced himself to continue, “sent in both Alpha and Charlie groups. Bravo is still holding behind the garages to take out stragglers.”

“Well,” Fury sighed, “that’s something anyway.”

“... And then Agent Sitwell went down,” Phil concluded, rushing to reach the end of the sentence before his voice started shaking, “just before you walked in, sir.”

“I… see.” 

Fury glanced over all the screens, then over the other agents in the room. They were all conspicuously hunched over their terminals or otherwise turned away. Phil was grateful not to have to meet any of their eyes-- they’d heard him screaming as Barton jumped, after all.

He only hoped he was too incoherent for any of them to understand the switch from  _ Clint _ to  _ Chris _ , the entirely useless appeal to a shared past that Barton had only bothered to acknowledge for the first time three months ago. (At the time, he’d oh-so-foolishly thought it had meant something. That Miami had meant something to Barton, too. Not that much, after all-- clearly Barton was capable of leaping off high buildings to rush to the defense even of women who’d betrayed and left him to be captured by the CI-fucking-A. Phil wasn’t sure he wanted to be in that company.)

“Well,” Fury sighed, “it’s not what I’d call a disaster, Agent Coulson. Call in Bravo. If we can get the Black Widow out of this, I’ll trade one of her for ten of the rest-- assuming any of ‘em survive. Alpha and Charlie don’t appear to be playing around.”

Phil nodded and opened his mouth to give the order and then…

…  just stood there, a moment, feeling the words stick in his throat.

“Phil?” That was Nick’s voice, not Director Fury’s, and it was too soft for anyone else in the room to hear.

“Right,” Phil rasped. “Bravo team, new orders. Split up. Half of you will come around the east side of the garage, the other half go through on the west side. Join the… join up with Alpha group and Charlie and take down the hostiles. Priorities remain the same. Our agents, then the Black Widow--”

“Alive, if you can,” Fury interjected, and Phil blinked at him.

“Alive,” he continued, “then Farkas, Labanzov, and the rest.”

On the screens and comms, Bravo group acknowledged the order and started to move out.

Phil struggled not to see himself pouring them uselessly into a fight that would chew them all up and spit them out. To find them all, at the end, fallen and twisted and beyond help. To have to see it happen, this time, too far away to--

“Phil,” Fury murmured again, “with me.”

Phil looked up to find Fury closer than he remembered, just outside of hovering-range, and Victoria Hand behind him, watching Phil closely. Her face was far too blank to be anything but a deliberate mask for whatever she thought of him. He hadn’t even noticed her come in.

“Agent Hand will take over here,” Fury said, “it’s mostly a mop-up from here on out. Agent,” he turned to her, “you know the objectives. Carry on.”

Hand nodded sharply, then turned and stalked up to the nearest agent at a terminal, snapping something that had them straightening up like lightning had struck them.

“Agent Coulson,” Fury continued, “I want you with me to prepare for the Black Widow.”

Phil let himself be drawn out of the dark room behind Fury, trying not to stumble over his coattails.

Fury waited until they were back in his office, the door closed behind them, to turn again. 

“Goddamnit Phil,” he said, and Phil only realized when he heard the regret in Fury’s tone that he had expected anger, instead, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” Phil managed, sounding bewildered to his own ears. “Nic-- Director, _ I’m  _ sorry. I apologize. I shouldn’t… I should never have let--”

“ _ I _ should never have let you back out in the field so quickly,” Fury sighed.

“I wasn’t  _ in _ the field,” Phil snapped, surprised at his own bitterness. But it was true; if he’d  _ been _ there, he at least could have had the satisfaction of burning off some of his rage with roundhouses. “I was perfectly safe and useless back here at the Hub.”

“Same difference,” Fury waved it off, and wandered over to pick two tumblers off his credenza. “It’s been barely two weeks since Bahrain. I should have parked you behind a desk for a bit.”

“It was an ongoing op, no one else--” could take care of Jasper and Barton to his satisfaction. Phil knew his weaknesses.

He knew them far too well, in fact. Would Barton have been in a position to jump if Phil hadn’t put him there? Would Jasper have had to go after him, would both of them to be unconscious and potentially trampled by now, if he hadn’t let his trust in them make him lazy? 

These were his people, they could do anything, after all. Jasper he’d hand-picked and mentored, pried out of his comfortable little diplomatic shell despite Jasper’s grumbling. Barton hadn’t even gotten an opportunity to grumble; Phil had known what Chris was capable of since he’d first leapt from a roof in Miami and Phil’d been determined to make sure everyone found out, too.

Phil might as well have shoved them off that roof in Budapest himself, egged on by his pride, his stupid pride in them. They were so good that he’d forgotten that even they couldn’t succeed when he neglected to do his duty by them and get them the proper intel.  It was the same pride that had led him to send Melinda May into a warehouse to attempt the rescue of an entire platoon on her own.

_ I can do it _ , she’d said, and he’d told her to go, even though neither of them had any idea what she’d be walking into. As for how it’d turned out, well…. Talk about being put behind a desk; she wasn’t even stable enough to do that yet. 

And that was all his fault, for forgetting that she still counted on him to read the situation accurately, to pull her back when they didn’t know if she was walking onto quicksand or solid ground.

“Here,” Fury said, breaking Phil from a memory of the absolute ruin on Melinda’s face when he’d finally gotten into that warehouse, her blankness since. Phil looked down to find a glass of scotch being pressed into his hands.

The tumbler was heavy, grounding. It was hard for hands to shake around that.

“Of course other agents could have run this operation. If any agent of SHIELD is ever completely irreplaceable, we’ll be in big trouble. I should have kept you back, and I’m pissed at myself.”

“You’re the one that wanted me in the field in the first place,” Phil said, mostly to fill the silence while he slumped back into the chair across from Fury’s desk and tried to pull his shattered thoughts back together. 

“You’re the one who’s been hoarding field agents ever since I pushed you out there-- and who I barely see back at headquarters anymore,” Fury pointed out, damn him. “I wasn’t wrong, Phil. You were  _ wasted _ back here, and if this puts you back behind a desk permanently I’m going to kick my own ass six ways from Sunday. But…”

“But?” Phil parroted.  Fury looked him over, snorted, and put his own scotch down on his desk. He leaned forward and folded his hands-- it was a posture that he’d used to upend Phil’s life far too frequently.

“But for now, you’re handing off your other active ops. Effective immediately. I want you working with me.”

“On the Black Widow?” What a bitter thought that was. How would he greet her?  _ Hi, Clint Barton once slept with me and nearly got himself killed saving  _ my _ ass, too. Small world, right? _

“Exactly,” Fury said. 

“You’re really planning on bringing her in?”

“You don’t think that’ll work?” Fury sounded surprised. “And here you’re the one who called me in.”

Phil shrugged. 

“Agent Barton requested a review,” he said stiffly. That earned him a snort, and Fury rising from his chair in a flurry of leather coattails.

“And you always do what Agent Barton asks,” he said, turning away.

“I-- no,” Phil frowned.  _ Yes. _ “I respect his… I owe my team the benefit of trusting their judgement. All my team.”

(And let himself depend on them too much-- which was why Bahrain and Budapest were on his conscience. He should have done an independent analysis, he should have second-guessed, that was his job, they  _ counted _ on him. If only he’d been able to convince Melinda May of that-- if only she’d let him take all her guilt on his own head, where it belonged.)

“In other words, you passed the request along and let me be the judge,” Fury shrugged. “Well, Phil, for better or worse, Barton’s brought us a Widow. Or-- will soon. If I’m gonna make a judgement, like you asked, I’m going to make damn sure I know what I have on my hands.”

“What’s-- what’s going to happen to Barton?” Phil asked, feeling his stomach sink and unable to identify why. (No-- unwilling to identify why. If he let himself, he knew. Oh, he knew.)

“That’ll depend largely on Barton,” Fury said. “He’s not your concern right now. What is your concern is that, due to the recommendation of an agent you might be familiar with, name of Coulson, we failed to debrief Barton on his ex-partner when he came in. I can’t imagine his intel wouldn’t have matched this ‘Tasha’ of his to any number of the Black Widow’s known missions. I’ll handle the debrief this time, make sure we don’t miss any other deadly ex-lovers. I want you to go over the intel and figure out what we’ve missed on her. Where the hell has she been for three years?”

“You do want to bring her in,” Phil set down his own drink now, and leaned forward.

Fury’s grin was sharklike. 

“Depends on her,” he repeated. “Depends entirely on her.”

It wasn’t at all what Phil wanted to hear.

\----

  


The bite of restraints against her wrist was the first thing she registered as she came up out of her dream. Soft restraints, not metal, cuffed tightly enough the pressure against her bones was constant. From the width and the soft rub of the cloth, Natasha knew they would be leather, padded with quilted flannel. Her pinky, twitching just a little to the right over the coarse sheets, encountered a slope to the mattress. Her hands must have been pulled to the sides of the bed, where the restraints could be attached to the frame itself. They wouldn’t be tied, they’d be looped and likely locked. Natasha didn’t bother to open her eyes while she took the rest of her inventory. There were matching cuffs around her ankles, of course. Oddly, though, she could breathe unimpeded-- they hadn’t bothered to strap her down by her chest. What, did they  _ want _ her to escape? 

Granted, the way her dream was lingering made it very unlikely that her mental state was clear enough for her to run just yet. The nightmare was only slowly receding, chimeras slinking reluctantly back into the cracks in her brain, looking over their shoulders every once in a while to take one last long look at the crumbling brick buildings they’d been rampaging through. Ideally, Natasha would able to tell reality from delusion before she set to work freeing herself (or conning someone else into freeing her). 

Then again,  _ ideally _ , Natasha would have been able to tell reality from delusion-- or from overgrown memories, half-erased and coming back from their stumps-- these last however-many years. And that, well, that had proven to be her real weakness. That was what delayed her now more than the restraints themselves or the lassitude that sat heavy on her chest.

Her head ached, in a distant third-person sort of way, but otherwise the bed was comfortable enough. Her heels shifted a little under the light blanket, letting air flow around her bare legs. The room smelled of nothing but antiseptic and the institutional aluminum of recirculated air. The lights were a cool blue against her eyelids. The sting of an IV in her arm was muted; it was mostly the weight and flex of the tube she felt, not the needle under her skin.

It was honestly comfortable-- except for the person hovering a few feet away to her left, his breath shallow but his gaze heavy. She didn’t  _ think _ the person was Clint Barton, but the possibility existed and could not be discarded without visual confirmation. She let her eyes flutter, hoping it would be mistaken for the restlessness of dreams.

From the snort that greeted her performance, Natasha gathered she hadn’t fooled the man at all. But he wasn’t Clint-- Clint would never have worn a suit and tie. And the man’s face, even blurred and out of focus as it had been, was longer and leaner, his skin paler, hair receding and brown. She didn’t bother to open her eyes again. If he wanted her, he could say something.

He didn’t. And so she didn’t. She waited, patient as her namesake in a web, until he finally shifted, sighing again, and stood. He left on nearly-silent feet, after watching her for what felt like an eon but was five minutes by her heartbeat. Natasha waited to make sure his presence had not concealed someone else’s as well, but the room made only empty sounds now that he’d left.

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

Good  _ heavens _ , what den of idiots had she wandered into?

She was in a hospital room-- that had been evident from the start-- and it was windowless and nestled far inside some facility, just as she’d expected. The walls were glass-paned, frosted to waist height and then clear. All well within intelligence-agency standard; the nurse’s station just a safe distance outside the door and the security camera overhead confirmed that.

But if they’d wanted her to believe she really was in SHIELD-- as the eagle in a disc etched into the glass wall and painted on the side of the nurse’s station suggested-- they should have stopped there. 

Instead they’d kept going, the classic mistake of overreach in details. There was a whiteboard affixed to the glass wall opposite her bed, and it had names and times clearly labelled in blue marker. Attending physician, staff (Marta, Donovan, and Frank), even a medication dosing schedule and a blank space for pain management goals.

It took Natasha a long moment to realize she’d seen something like it before, in a hospital-- of course she had, she shouldn’t be so muddle-headed, she’d been a nurse once. Played a nurse once. Or had she dreamt that? Was this whiteboard, so glaringly out of place, part of the continued flaking away of the layers of her memories? Surely not, or there wouldn’t have been that stupid eagle again, high in the right corner of the board, glaring down at her. 

Something flickered beyond the wall, and Natasha glanced over. A TV-- there was a TV at the nurse’s station, and a blonde in a lavender suit was dancing her way across a soundstage filled with sofas and chairs. A bored nurse sat watching it, his sneakered feet propped up on the counter. 

Where the  _ hell _ was she, anyway? This, this aggressively normal place, practically shoving information in her face, surrounding her with canned air and worn flannel, couldn’t actually be SHIELD, could it?

Natasha closed her eyes and forced herself to fall down into the trap of memory again, looking for the recent past. There had been a meet, then gas, something jabbing her neck, then a long period where she reeled from one event to another. Just before her narrative went black, she thought she remembered fighting two dozen or so stinking Hungarians and Russians. (And by  _ stinking _ she meant just that-- borscht and onion and garlic wafted from some and cheesy skin smell from others.) A fight she’d been losing, made sluggish by some drug or more likely an entire cocktail of them. 

She also thought she remembered Hawkeye calling her name, as improvident as he’d ever been when they’d been together. Then then the thump of his back against hers, the flex of his shoulder against hers as he fought. 

Well.

It was unlikely that her captors would have made  _ that _ up. The shoulders in question had felt heavier, broader than he’d been as a starveling mercenary, so she didn’t think her memory was putting on an act for her this time. Hawkeye had been there in fact, not just hallucination. But she was sure she’d betrayed him years ago. That much was very clear. So why in the world would he have put his back to hers in a fight?

That, Natasha thought, was a question that was perhaps worth lingering to answer. Besides, she was so very tired, and in this quiet place, where the air murmured from the vents in such a comforting way, perhaps the dreams would stay just that for a little.

Natasha slept.

  


\----

  


“Ngh,” Clint muttered, and opened one eye, blinking against the light. A whiteboard swam slowly into focus, emblazoned with the SHIELD logo, and he felt his ribs expand and ache against a shuddering sigh.

Okay, what the hell had landed him in SHIELD medical this time, and on an interior wing, no less? Interesting. He must have worried someone. Except they couldn’t have been that worried, ‘cause usually when he was that much of an idiot he woke up to Jasper Sitwell frowning down at him, muttering things under his breath in his usual multi-lingual fashion.

Clint flexed each muscle cautiously while he scanned the whiteboard, wincing as the effort of reading and the dull ache from his skull confirmed what the doctor’s scrawl told him-- head injury, probable concussion, multiple contusions, cracked rib. Oh, joy. Speaking of-- Joy was on his care team again, along with two people he didn’t know. Dr. Sivarajah, which was what he’d expect after a head injury and really, usually Jasper was here for these kinds of things. Although until recently it might have been Bobbi. Once, after a particularly rough op, he’d even had a rare Coulson sighting-- oh.

The pre-knockout memories came flooding back, and Clint groaned. 

Well no, after Clint’d pulled  _ that _ stunt, he could see why no one was at his bedside waiting to comfort him.

Far more shocking was the fact that they hadn’t bothered to cuff him to the bed. After  _ that _ , they still trusted him not to run? Or did they just know he had nowhere to go?

Yeah, that was more likely. Clint squeezed his eyes back shut and tried to will away the cotton stuffing his throat and his brain. Of course that was it; why bother to secure a guy who’d just thrown away his entire life? What was he gonna do, run to Bobbi? Go mercenary again? Rampage through SHIELD’s secure medical wing hoping someone would put him out of his misery?

Clint squinted at the whiteboard again. The shit currently flowing through his IV would definitely account for the kind of dull not-thereness of the pain. Shouldn’t be enough to make him  _ too _ muzzy-- no fucking surprise, given the TBI. What it meant, though, was that the pain in his chest was probably less his rib and more his heart, telling him what it thought about the fact that, no matter how much he tried to explain it away, someone at SHIELD had trusted him enough to leave him loose and unattended after he’d just tried to fast line his way out of their organization.

Small favors-- at least being alone meant he had time to come to grips with that before he had to face--

“Welcome back, Agent Barton.” 

Clint whipped his head towards the door  _ way _ too fast and winced again. Director Nicholas Fury himself was lounging against the open doorframe, in all his black-on-black-on-brown glory. He was scowling faintly around his eyepatch. 

“Sir?” Clint rasped. He scrambled around for the ubiquitous styrofoam cup of mostly-ice and slurped quickly. 

“You were out for a while,” Fury said, coming in and shutting the door. Clint watched to see if he’d flare out those ridiculous coattails of his and sit, but he didn’t. Well, fine; if he wanted to loom, he could loom. He was the director of SHIELD, after all, he could hover wherever the fuck he wanted to, even if it was just at the foot of Clint’s bed.

Clint maneuvered his bed upright and took a moment to center himself, feeling more than seeing the weight of Fury’s stare. Well, fine, if he wasn’t gonna start, Clint was.

“I’m really really sorry, Director,” he said.

“Hrmph,” Fury replied. “Sorry for what?”

_ My entire fucking life, probably _ , Clint thought. 

“For…” he cast about for the words, trying to pick through the mess in his head. “For not telling you about Tasha. Sir. Back when I came on board. Or… or since, I guess.”

Fury’s eyebrows had climbed half off his bald forehead, but he merely snorted.

“What happened when you were recruited is not on you. What happened since? Absolutely is. I assume at some point my organization, intimidating as it can be, managed to earn your trust a little. I sure as fuck know Jasper Sitwell and Phil Coulson did. And you had to know that anyone with a past like your Tasha had likely crossed paths with SHIELD before-- and might again. Hell, we might even have caught her years ago, and you might have wound up with a commendation, instead of me reaming your ass out. So why did they find out you’d banged the Black Widow just before you jumped off a roof?”

“It didn’t… I didn’t know she was… her,” Clint explained, trying not to be too stung by the reminder that he’d betrayed both Jas and Coulson. “And I guess I just didn’t think it was relevant?”

“Uh huh. And did it turn out to be relevant?”

“Lil’ bit,” Clint muttered, which that got him another snort and a grumble. Otherwise, Fury still looked like the badass motherfucker who’d come to drag his ass to hell. Coulson was supposed to be friends with this guy-- no, more than that, this was the man who’d removed a handgun from Coulson’s mouth. Clint tried to picture that, failed entirely. “I guess that’s why I should have said something, sir?” 

“Lil’ bit,” Fury parroted back at him. “That’s all you’re sorry for?” 

“Y… no? I mean I’m sorry SHIELD had to save my ass and fuck up our op?” Clint tried. That was it, right, what Fury was looking for? Although maybe not-- maybe saving Clint’s sorry ass had just been a by-product of the operation itself. In that case, apologizing for needing to be rescued would be--

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?” Fury asked. 

\-- a bad idea.

Yeah.

“You’re not gonna apologize for jumping off the building in the first place to go help the second-highest priority on SHIELD’s targets of opportunity list, Agent Barton?” Fury’d crossed his arms, and it bulked him up even further, although after a certain point his looming game was so strong that stepping it up didn’t have much effect.

“No,” Clint said, before he could stop himself. 

It was the truth though, plain and simple. It’d never been an option not to, however much he might have agonized. That this wasn’t obvious to Fury was… well, honestly it was what Clint should’ve expected. He’d just forgotten, after all this time with Jasper and Coulson, that most other people found some of Clint’s decisions a little bit, uh, hare-brained. 

“Funny thing, Barton,” Fury said, “I think I just heard you apologize for not telling us about your ex, when we’d all carefully avoided ordering you to tell us about her. But you’re not apologizing for disobeying an order to stay put, even though that put an entire team in danger?”

Remarkably, he actually de-loomed a little, like he couldn’t properly express the depths of his incredulity while standing there doing a statue impression. 

“I guess I’m kind of a contrary SOB like that,” Clint admitted.

Huh. Maybe that IV was stronger than he’d thought. Sneaky SHIELD bastards.

“Was that you being an SOB, or was that you still wanting in her pants?” Fury asked, and it was Clint’s turn to snort.

“Like fuck,” he said.

“Oh yeah? And yet you put your ass on the line to keep her alive. How  _ do _ you feel about her now, Agent?”

“I--” Clint stopped short and tried to figure out how to explain that he hadn’t really thought that one through. It hadn’t seemed important how he felt about her  _ now _ since his plan hadn’t included them  _ talking _ afterwards. He’d figured she’d just roll her eyes at him-- typical naive Hawkeye, to think she’d be grateful-- and stalk off, either into the sunset or into the waiting arms of Agent Sitwell and the A-Team. 

Fury watched him sort through it.

“Disgruntled,” was what Clint finally settled on.

“Huh,” Fury said, and just stood there a long moment, looking a little past Clint. When he moved again, it was to shrug his shoulders and take off his coat. Clint watched, wide-eyed, as he tossed it over the little tray table next to Clint’s bed, and then sat down in the previously-empty visitor’s chair. He leaned back, crossing his hands over his belly. “Huh.”

“Sir, how… how’s Jasper? And… and Coulson? Are they, can I, is everyone okay?” 

Not like Clint maybe had a right to ask about them, but the worst Fury was gonna do was tell him that. 

“They both took some hits from your little stunt, Barton, one way or another,” Fury said. “They’ll recover-- but I don’t think either of ‘em will be in to see you any time soon. Sitwell’s still in Hungary and Coulson… well.” 

From Fury’s wince and splayed hands, Clint thought he didn’t want to know what Coulson was feeling. Betrayed, maybe-- disappointed, definitely. Probably  _ deeply _ disappointed, and to be honest that was worse than his anger. 

“I’m not telling you anything that should be shocking here, Barton. And I don’t believe for a minute you didn’t know the consequences when you leapt, so don’t give me that wounded puppy face. You made your bed-- and theirs.”

“Yeah.” It was amazing how smooth the weave of his blanket was, really, worn smooth by the asses of probably dozens of convalescing SHIELD agents. “Yeah, I kinda figured. I just.... ” Clint picked fitfully at a nub of lint, before continuing with a croak, “I hope they’re okay.”

He waited for Fury to decide he was done humoring the injured guy, hand him his pink slip-- or whatever they did at SHIELD when the trash needed taking out-- and go.

“I apologized to Coulson.” Fury sounded so nonchalant about it Clint snapped his eyes back up, to find Fury’d leaned forward. “I made a mistake myself, bringing you in. Guess it came back to bite us on the ass.”

“I--” Clint knew he’d gone pale, probably even kinda green. He  _ felt _ green, sick even. 

_ You don’t get to feel like shit _ , he told himself firmly,  _ you knew you were throwing yourself right out of SHIELD. Man up. _ It didn’t work. His jaw still stayed obstinately slack.

“I should have pressed,” Fury continued, watching calmly as Clint started to break apart, “should’ve paid more attention to you all along-- certainly after that stunt with Capture the Cap. My problem is I trust too much-- no. My problem is I trust Coulson too much, if I’m gonna lay my cards on the table. Never let anyone tell you saving each others’ lives doesn’t bond you-- maybe blind you.”

Fury tapped absently at his eyepatch, then glared at Clint when he caught himself doing it, like he was daring Clint to say something.

Clint did not actually have a death wish, so he just swallowed and looked away.

“Figured Coulson had it all under control,” Fury said when he finally picked up the thread again. “Hell, he was micromanaging your training schedule so much I was waiting to see if he’d build in naptime. Seemed best for me to stay hands off, since he was so hands on. My mistake.”

Clint figured someone’d made a mistake somewhere, since that didn’t sound like the reality he lived in at all, the one where Coulson’d barely bothered with him during his probationary period. 

“That’s… not how I remember it, sir,” he whispered.

“Come off it, Barton.”

Clint looked back up to find Fury rolling his eye impatiently, like Clint ought to have  _ known _ all this. He could feel his own eyebrows go puppy-high in his forehead. 

“Don’t play dumb at me,” Fury snapped. “Three-quarters of SHIELD knows you’re his protege, and the other quarter are either stationed in Greenland or I question their fitness to serve.”

“Well great,” Clint snapped, feeling his cheeks burn, “you can just add me to that last category, if you haven’t already. He never talked to me! He barely said two words to me, sir, the whole time I was training. He only pulled me for his ops because he liked Jas and-- and--”

And why? After all, what the hell was so special about Clint, except for working with Coulson’s actual protege? Coulson knew they came as a package deal. The only other reason he could think of for Coulson to feel partial was Miami, and--

“Exactly,” said Fury. “Everything Sitwell asked him for to get you trained up, Coulson signed off on. No questions. Flight class, class exemptions, extra range time, milk runs, a new therapist. You know that whenever someone wanted to request you or Sitwell on an op, they pretty much had to bribe Coulson? Run the whole damn op by him? Forms in triplicate?”

For a moment, Clint thought they’d started talking about some other agent mid-sentence, since he didn’t remember anyone fighting over little old  _ him _ . He supposed Fury would be in a position to know if anyone was; it just sounded so implausible.

“No, I-- I never noticed. I thought...” 

Although it certainly put a new light on some of the side-comments Felix Blake had made, the last time Clint and Jas had worked with him, about people who should stick to running their own damn ops. And why Bobbi had teasingly called him SHIELD’s fair-haired boy more than once.

He reeled and clutched the sides of the bed, feeling abruptly sick to his stomach. Just dizziness, only natural after a head injury. Just normal vertigo, not his world rocking on its foundations.

Where had he been while Coulson was arranging his life for him, anyway? Some parallel universe SHIELD?  

“Can’t say he did wrong by you either, Barton. You owe a  _ lot _ to Coulson.” 

Yeah, his entire SHIELD career, apparently. The career he  _ thought _ he’d earned. Funny how quickly heartburn could come on.

Fury was still going, seemingly oblivious.

“And you know how you repaid that?” he growled, apparently finally at the end of his tirade.

“I jumped off a roof?” Clint mumbled, thoroughly miserable. 

“You jumped off a roof,” Fury agreed. “Hell of a way to repay the guy.”

Clint narrowly avoided either snarling or sobbing; he already knew he’d fucked it all up with Coulson, all the respect he’d tried to gain. Even though, apparently, Coulson-- Phillip-- had never been interested in letting Clint earn anything. Instead, he’d been shoving things at Clint that he only thought that he’d earned, calling dibs on him when his back was turned. Tilting the playing field in Clint’s favor so Clint thought he Coulson respected him, when he was just being played around with like a doll in a damned doll-house. And then, which Clint had finally asked, Coulson’d had the nerve to make it seem like he was giving Clint a fresh fucking start.

What the hell had Coulson been thinking? Maybe it was the concussion talking, but it made no sense at all to Clint, and the uncertainty was stomach-churning. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you did just because you once spent a dirty week with a guy on your leave, and Clint had no other claim on Coulson’s attention that he could see. 

“But, hey,” Fury said, drawing Clint’s attention back to him. He stood up suddenly, slapping his palms on the chair arms and then brushing together-- brushing Clint off them, more likely. “That’s over now. Done.”

“Done?” Clint asked, against his will. The word had all the finality of a piano falling on him. The reverberations rang in his ear long after impact.

“Yeah,” Fury said, picking up his coat. “Done. Coulson’s not your CO anymore, not even peripherally. You’re dealing directly with me, now. That’s what you get when you throw yourself off the motherfucking roof.”

“You’re kicking me out.” 

The look Fury gave him was instructive, in a very school-of-hard-knocks sort of way.

“Kicked yourself out when you jumped, Barton,” he said, and shrugged himself into his coat sleeves. “Thought you knew that.”

Clint did, sure he did. Just, some stupid treacherous bit of hope had kept buoying him up. Now that Fury’d taken it away, Clint felt like he was drowning.

“Oh,” he said, hoping he’d managed to push back all the tears. He didn’t dare raise a thumb to his eyes to make sure he’d gotten them all.

“Barton. Clint.” 

Fury’d finished putting his coat back on and come right up to the bed.

“Shit, Barton, it’s not like we’re gonna take you out back and shoot you or anything.” 

No, right, what did you do with an ex-SHIELD agent with a head stuffed full of secrets? Clint wasn’t sure he wanted to know-- but then he was probably not gonna remember the answer to that soon.

“Barton,” Fury said again, “look at me.”

Clint looked. Fury was holding his right hand out, waggling it impatiently. Clint stared at it.

“You’ve got some promise, Clint,” Fury said kindly. “Shame to waste it.”

Clint flashed back to the last hand that had waggled in his face like that-- Jasper Sitwell’s hand, presented in the gloom of a Dutch dusk. Clint’d been too busy clamping down on the bullet wound Sitwell’d accidentally given him to take it. 

“You what?” Clint asked, just to make sure he wasn’t actually hallucinating. 

“I said you had promise. Coulson’s damn good at identifying talent. His mistake with you was… well damned if I know why he did any of it. But I hate to waste the potential, even if you did just try and leave us feet-first and off of a three-story drop. So let’s forget all that. Mistakes were made and all that passive-voice bullshit. If you want a chance, SHIELD has one more for you.”

Clint looked up at Fury’s face, all solemn and unreadable. At his hand still hovering in the air.

“Fresh start?” Clint croaked.

“Fresh start,” Fury confirmed. “Gotta prove yourself to me this time, not Jasper. Not Coulson.” That sounded like a warning.

It wasn’t one Clint was gonna protest. God, it was more than generous, even if it was fucking bitter. Wasn’t that what he thought he’d been doing all this time?

“You up for it?” Fury asked him.

A fresh start. Bounced down to probie again, Clint was pretty sure, but he could work with that. It’d suck, especially since everyone would  _ know _ . Probably, out there, everyone already did know. Clint Dumbass Barton, trying to get his team killed because he’d once dicked an assassin chick. But whatever, it was better than being  _ out  _ of SHIELD. Hell, what it was, was a chance to do it  _ right _ this time, prove that Clint could be worthy of SHIELD on his own terms, not because someone out of his past apparently had a hard-on for giving him flight lessons.

Clint opened his mouth to say yes, when a thought hit him with the force of one of Coulson’s uppercuts. 

“What about Tasha?” he asked.

If there was one thing no one on this green and blue planet had ever said about Clint Barton, it was that he took the easy way out.

“What about her?” Fury frowned.

“You kept her alive,” Clint clarified.

It sent a little shock through him to realize he hadn’t doubted that for a second, despite the fact that she’d still been Target of Opportunity Number Two when he’d gotten knocked out. Coulson had said he’d ask Fury; he wouldn’t have done that if there’d been no hope. Or would he? If he’d only been coddling Clint all this time, after all? Well, screw whatever Coulson’d thought-- Fury’d just told Clint he was “done” with Coulson, so Fury was who he was gonna have to make understand. At least Fury’d left her alive, hadn’t let Clint risk his ass in vain. 

“What’s going to happen to her?”

The IV drip began to beep its high pitched warning call of almost-gone, and Fury reached over to deal with it.

“Does it matter to you what happens to her?” he asked, with open curiosity. 

“Yeah,” Clint told him, trying not to sound as pathetic as he felt about it. 

“You only gonna stick with SHIELD if she signs on or something?” 

Fury withdrew his hand in favor of fisting them both on his hips. Fucker knew exactly how dramatic he was, Clint decided. And Clint understood-- if he were Fury, he guessed he’d be worried Clint was compromised too. At least, he’d be thinking, he was finding out now, before Clint got himself fucked over by her again.

It was logical, but it still stung.

“No,” Clint replied, shaking his head. “I... if SHIELD… Coulson wouldn’t….”

Well shit, how  _ could _ he explain it in a way that didn’t sound weird-- or worse, hopelessly naive? He backed up and tried again.

“If SHIELD’s the kind of… if you’d just taken her out back and shot her… no, I… I mean you wouldn’t but…. I don’t know if I wanna be part of SHIELD, if SHIELD’s not gonna treat her fairly,” Clint managed finally.

And then he waited for Fury to roar at him about unfair treatment of someone who they ought by rights to have shot on sight. Or how he could take his scruples and just go. Instead, Fury crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, like heaven help him because everyone on earth was a fucking idiot.

“Don’t you?” he snapped. “You’d prefer to go back to lone wolfing it, Barton?”

Clint shrugged and looked away.

“If that’s what it takes to trust the person calling my shots?” he said, drawing the words out slowly. “Yeah.”

The IV ticked quietly once, twice, and some piece of machinery ground down as it dripped its last drip.

“She gets a choice,” Fury said, shifting. “A real one. And if you want to know what that is, you’re gonna have to ask her. Is that enough for you?”

Clint looked up at his whiteboard once more, the familiar names of nurses and doctors, the eagle glaring at him side-eyed. Looked over at the Director of SHIELD, and felt something unknot in his chest.

“Yeah,” he said.

  


\----

  


“Mary Farrell,” said the one-eyed man, as he came through the door.

Natasha let herself register confusion, just about the eyes, while she inventoried him. Tall, dark-skinned, bald-headed, one-eyed, dressed all in black, suit jacket cut for movement and weapons concealment as well as style, movement neither military or not. 

Perhaps the whiteboard had  _ not lied  _ and she was in SHIELD after all-- if this wasn’t Director Nicholas Fury himself, he was doing a damned good impression of it. She pressed her lips shut.

“Laura Matthers,” he greeted her again, as he pulled her chart up.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oktober,” he said, raising one back. (The one that didn’t correspond to an eye-- a surprisingly effective tactic.)

“And you will call me ‘Tasha’ next, I suppose,” she sighed-- and did not add the corollary that if he did, she was going to strike him, and consequences be damned. She  _ could _ , no less. The suited man had come back a little while ago, two guards and a nurse hovering behind him, and removed her cuffs. He’d done it with sure, steady fingers, as if he unbound assassins every day, and looked up to meet her gaze only at the end. His face was set at secret agent neutral, nothing to be read except that someone had broken his nose at  _ least _ once. She gave him nothing in return, and his lips twitched once before he left.  _ He _ , at least, Natasha had thought, was evidence that her hosts were competent. 

She hadn’t tried to move after he left except to chafe her wrists and reach for the water cup beside her bed. After all, if they were drugging her, they were already doing it intravenously. If they wanted to watch her try to escape, why give them tells for later? She was clearly being made ready for a visit, and here was her visitor, reeling off the greatest hits from her extensive alias list.

“Why would I call you ‘Tasha’? It means nothing more than any of the others, does it?” Nicholas Fury asked her, and she felt her shoulders freeze against her will. “I’m sorry-- was that your line?”

_ Yes _ . But then, all believable sources had said that SHIELD’s Director was no mere figurehead. She should have expected something like this.

(Natasha tended to class as “unbelievable” sources that got themselves killed or captured by SHIELD, who tended to overlap with sources that thought Fury’d gotten the job merely because he looked the part. Seeing him up close she had more sympathy, late come though it might be. He looked the part, clearly, in order to make people think he’d gotten the job because he looked the part.)

“You think you want to recruit me,” she mused, after she felt she’d let his question hang long enough for him to understand she didn’t think it worthy of response. “Otherwise I would be dead. Or drugged, if you wanted information.”

“That’s what you got from this?” Fury asked, sitting down in the chair next to her and leaning forward,  _ well _ within easy assassination distance. She’d hardly have to lift a pinky.

Yes. Clearly. Recruitment.

Natasha considered her play briefly. Her head still throbbed, there had been too much ice and not enough water in her cup, and if she could in any way cut this game short she would.

“You sent Hawkeye after me,” she said, putting a little Russian into it since that had often made Americans think she was letting down her guard as well as her accent, “You thought this would work, that I would trust him, or feel grateful, and come in to SHIELD.”

“I did not motherfucking send Agent Barton after you, I wanted you dead,” Fury said, matter of fact about it.

“Wise of you,” Natasha told him. 

“Hrmph,” he said. “No, I didn’t send Agent Barton after you, he sent himself-- against orders. Got his best friend knocked on the head along with the both of you. And here we all are-- with headaches.”

“He was always overly sentimental,” Natasha sighed. Memories beat at her, rising from the morass her past had become. A tawny scrawny young mercenary grinning at her after downing half her opponents. Ducking his head and blushing as she’d let approbation seep through her annoyance. He had been useful, she told herself at first. Useful and smitten, and why would he not be? And she had been alone, free-- she’d thought-- ready to make her own name for herself, and he had been warm at her back….

As he had in Budapest, with no reason at all, so long after the warehouse where something had broken in her brain and the Red Room had bled back like a veil over her sight. After she’d left him for dead with an already-deceased scientist and a dozen or more enemies. Would it have made a difference to him to know that it had been that episode that had finally revealed the extent of the Red Room’s conditioning to her? That she had not known until that moment just how many traps they had left in her brain?

Fury was watching her patiently, though Natasha could not imagine she’d let any of that show in her face. Like the nameless agent who’d freed her wrists, she’d long ago disciplined her resting face into passivity.  _ Agent Barton _ , Fury had called Clint. Had he learned to still his mobile face, like the other agent? It seemed hard to believe.

“He was one of our best agents,” Fury rumbled, as if he’d heard her thought. “Rose fast. Handles the weirdest of weird shit without blinking-- his jokes are lame, but nobody’s perfect. His only real problem is that he never does seem to get his own value.”

She dropped her gaze from his before she knew she’d done it. Yes. This, too, she remembered. This never wavered in her memory, nor the frustration that had occasionally bubbled over at Clint’s mis-estimation of himself.

“For instance,” Fury continued, “he seemed to think that you were worth throwing himself away for, even though you’d left him to die or be captured by the CIA. The motherfucking CIA, woman. Now that’s just  _ rude _ .” 

He wasn’t bothering to hide behind a mask like his agent had, like she did. He let his disdain radiate, and Natasha felt herself begin to react against her will. (The drugs… or if not drugs, the concussion. That had to be it. Or her own brain turning against her, again and again and again.)

“So you want to recruit me because of him?” she hazarded. 

“I want to recruit you because you’re the Black Widow,” Fury told her, leaning back and shrugging. “That is  _ the _ Black Widow, not  _ a _ Black Widow. Because you earned yourself that pronoun.”

SHIELD… SHIELD worked  _ really _ quickly, Natasha thought, blinking fast.  Well, the Red Room was gone, what did she expect? Its secrets to stay hidden in dark corners after she’d blown open the cellar doors?

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” Fury sighed, and… what was that look on his face, that deepened the brown of his eye and softened the corners of his mouth? “We’re sometimes a bit slow at SHIELD, we get it. Can’t focus everywhere at once. But when you drop an assassin in our lap along with a fistful of stolen Russian secrets, we manage to put  два and два together. You’re the one that took the Red Room apart. They broke you and you broke them back-- and now you’re all broken.” 

The conclusion was softly said, and she ducked her head against it. Let him think what he liked; she was too tired to mask the truth of it.

“And you think this makes me susceptible.” 

“I think you’re no dumber than I am,” he snorted. “You know your value on the open market-- or if you didn’t I can tell you what Farkas thought it was, down to the forint. Everyone out there’ll have an offer for you-- or a bullet, to keep anyone else from snapping you up.”

“It’s been that way a long while now,” Natasha told him. 

“And look where that nearly got you: killed, or worse.”

“You still could,” she said, raising her chin.

“Oh, we won’t kill you. Not now that we’ve kept you. That’d just get messy when I had to account for it. We all answer to someone.” Fury huffed a laugh, just a small one, as if it were some private joke of his. “Now, we  _ can _ lock you in a nice quiet cell in the Fridge if you’d prefer. But I think you wouldn’t.”

No, she profoundly would  _ not _ , and suspected he knew that. Alone with her thoughts? With all those demi-memories from lives she’d never lived curling around each other, crowding up, nothing to  _ do _ to keep them at bay, no way to outrun them, no one to make bleed in revenge for all of the blood she’d spilled that she never should have? To live every night with the the flickers of flame, burning in the windows of a hospital ward, dancing beneath her eyelids?

Imprisonment was a far more bitter punishment than death, even if she escaped eventually. Assuming she stayed sane enough to do so. (And if she didn’t-- if she got out but left her sanity behind-- then what? To do it all again?)

“And if I join you?” she asked, even while she thought  _ more death _ . She waited for him to dress it up in whatever bunting SHIELD preferred. (Protection, if she remembered correctly. A shield for the innocent. How precious.)

Fury leaned forward.

“A lot of that depends on you. I’m not going to give you a big speech or anything; I don’t think you’re really in a mood to listen.”

“I appreciate that,” she said. 

He grinned, a real grin, teeth gleaming white and dangerous.

“I have speeches, mind you. Stories, too. Remind me to tell you the one about the elevator operator later. But not right now. No, right now, let me just say that of all the organizations that could have landed you, we are probably uniquely situated to provide you with an incentive to stay.”

“And what’s that?” Natasha leaned forward. “Clint?” It was logical-- what other hook did he have? Red Room knowlege, yes, clearly, scraped from Farkas and maybe Labanzov and whomever else they’d managed to round up. Enough to know her name, not enough to know exactly what they’d done to her. They would have  _ some _ way of working with people who’d been brainwas-- who’d had many pasts-- or so she suspected. But she could point another organization in that direction, it didn’t have to be SHIELD. Any organization that wanted her was going to have to fix her, after all.

Fury shook his head, laughing.

“Naw. Or-- not only. But that’s not a bad idea, actually.” He slapped both hands on the sides of his chair, and pushed himself up, shrugging his jacket back into place as he went. “You want to know why Barton went after you, so why don’t you go talk to him about what the hell he was thinking. See if that doesn’t help you make up your mind about us.” 

He threw her a wink (it was a wink-- wasn’t it?) on his way out the door.

Natasha closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was only tired.

The memory of betrayal, etched in wide eyes and a rounded mouth on Clint’s face, flashed in front of her.

“дерьмо,“ she muttered. 

Apparently Director Fury had rubbed off on her more than she’d thought.

  


\----

  


“Clint Barton, what were you thinking?” Natasha asked as she dropped into the chair beside his bed.  

He’d been asleep-- or pretending to be asleep, if he was still half as flighty as he’d been in the days when they’d slept together-- but after a moment he stirred, answering her even while he pulled himself upright.

“Hello, Natasha. Still alive, huh?” 

Natasha felt her chin raise, and fought the reflex. Clint’s eyes had barely fluttered open, gummed and unfocused, and already she felt pinned by them. She leaned forward, letting her arms drape over the armrests of the horrid little chair, trying to remember how things between them used to go. Clint waited for her patiently, starting to droop a little as the silence went on. 

Of all the things she could have said, Natasha kept feeling the phrase  _ you used to call me Tasha _ bubbling up. She glared at Clint again to stifle it. He huffed a sad little laugh, and closed his eyes for a moment. 

“Glad you’re alive,” he admitted. “Gave up enough for it. I see Fury at least let you run free in the medical ward-- well, no one ever accused him of playing it safe. Should I assume he’s trying to recruit you?” 

She doubled-down on the glare, but time or something broken between them-- something she’d broken, to be honest-- seemed to have immunized him against it. 

“You’re as perceptive as ever,” she tried in her driest tones, pressing her lips closed. More perceptive, she was afraid. He’d called himself Hawkeye in their shared past and she’d laughed, because he saw better from a distance but he was so near-sighted when it came to her. Now, now she couldn’t laugh.

“What are you doing here, Natasha?” 

“You brought me here, Clint, you tell me.” She hadn’t meant it to sound like such an honest question.

“Pretty sure I was unconscious at the time,” Clint drawled, as if that somehow absolved him of all stupidity. “Heard you were, too.”

“I was,” she conceded. Would he have run from the consequences of this, from her, if he’d been conscious? “Was that your plan, so that I could not fight you? Or were you going to try and persuade me?” 

As she had with Director Fury, she found herself being far more blunt than she’d intended. She’d been exhausted for so long, she told herself. Her usual finesse just seemed like so much work to go through for so little gain. They had Clint; they must know her style.

There was a nasty twist to Clint’s lip when he answered her.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, “I hadn’t bothered to get that far.” 

“Of course not. Why did I even ask?”

Clint’s eyebrow answered that one for her, and when or where had he picked up that ability? Did it come SHIELD-standard?

“So. No cuffs,” he said after a brief pause in which his gaze didn’t leave hers, “still breathing. Either you’ve broken out and you’re planning on killing me, or I was right about Fury and you’ve come on board.” 

“I could be about to take you hostage,” she told him sweetly, fluttering her eyelashes as an excuse to break the stare for a moment. It was making her eyes burn.

“Really unwieldy hostage I’d be right now, Natasha.” He raised one hand just far enough to emphasize the IV tube still poked into it and pumping. He’d gotten knocked on the head, Fury had said, and she’d remembered that-- remembered, too, some sort of trampling, before her own memories had gone dark. The fluid drip must be the least of his impediments.

“I could be trying to get you to go with me willingly,” she said, then bit her lip-- that was far, far too obvious a hook; she’d have been better off just outright asking. 

Clint didn’t seem to notice her hesitation. He turned his head away from her and gazed up at the ceiling. So pale, half his face mottled yellow and purple, blonde hair a short greasy shock, exhaustion beginning to settle in little lines around his eyes and pliable mouth. There had been a young man there, not so many years ago, wide-eyed and surprisingly earnest-- all gone now.

“No,” he said, softly, “no, you wouldn’t be trying to do that.”

“Would you want me to?” she asked, carefully neutral, searching his face. He turned those damned eyes on her, searching her back. It prickled her cheeks.

  


“How did it happen, Natasha?” he asked finally, rather than answer-- which might, in itself, have been one. “How did you let yourself get taken that way?”

She shrugged-- an elegant little gesture she’d picked up from a passing girl one afternoon in Montmartre. Many of her gestures had been acquired in a similar fashion, were deployed in a wide variety of circumstances divorced from their origins. This one had been carefully calculated to suggest insouciance, but here, somehow, it merely made her feel brittle.

“These things happen,” she said, but she was lying.

These things did not happen-- not to her. Other people might find themselves ambushed, drugged, and betrayed by the people they’d thought they were meeting to deal with. The Black Widow did not-- except that she had this time, because she’d been so very tired, confused by the memories that were in her head but were not hers. So distracted by the task she’d set herself, tearing her mind open bit by bit until she’d excised all outside influences, that she hadn’t noticed her danger until too late.

The prospect of an end had come as something of a relief, if she was being honest with herself. She would go down fighting, of course, but at least that would be  _ it. _ After all that time, all the nightmares she felt like she was perpetually fleeing, she could rest. And in the end, she could even have a familiar face, a familiar back to hers, a sign that she deserved at least a thimbleful of grace, that she would be given absolution after all.

Except, of course, she had come to in a secure medical ward, with a pleasant-faced man in a suit gazing at her with this curious little frown as she tried to assimilate the sheer fact of survival. This, she was coming to believe, had been an early indicator of what was in store for her at SHIELD in general; curiosity and even-handedness that hurt worse than a blow. What was she to do with all this? It had to be calculated, but why had they decided that this was the bait that would land her?

Damn Clint Barton and his light eyes and his misplaced sense of… of…  _ decency _ , anyway, for bringing her here.

“You are correct; I was given an offer of employment from SHIELD,” she continued, to see what he would do-- which was blink lazily. 

“You’re taking it?” he asked after a while, his voice flat, clearly too tired, or frustrated, or perhaps bored, to bother pretending he didn’t know what was expected of him. When had her deadly puppy grown into this tawny tired man? 

She tilted her head in an non-committal sort of way. 

“My other choices are… less than desirable.” Less than death, therefore little good to her. 

Clint snorted, and she wondered how much he had been told about her circumstances prior to their meeting in Budapest. 

“It’s not a bad place to work,” he said.

So help her, she believed him. 

“Why  _ did _ you do it?” she whispered. Why save her life, and with no apparent exit plan? The question startled a very bitter smile out of him.

“Apparently, it’s how I roll these days, Natasha,” he said, turning both his palms up in a what’re you gonna do sort of gesture that sparked far too many memories.

“You’re a trusting fool, then.”

“You’d be the first person at SHIELD to tell me that,” he laughed. “I don’t think anyone would put trust high on my list of finer qualities. Not now.”

  


Natasha opened her mouth to ask when he’d finally learned sense, and how, and then shut it. The answer was obvious enough that the question would only wound. She’d been the one to teach him that lesson. If she regretted it now that she saw his face, then she was doubly the fool he was. 

But why had Fury thought that talking with Clint would help her decide whether to accept his offer or to walk willingly into a cell? All she saw here was an exhausted man, the shell of the overgrown boy she’d torn the heart out of. 

“You don’t trust SHIELD, then,” she said, and got a wince.

“Oh, I do,” he whispered, so quietly she barely heard him. “I do. Even though…” he broke off, shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Not now.” After a moment, he sighed and looked back up at her.

“Don’t let… if you’re thinking of saying no because I’m here, don’t. You won’t have to see me.”

“It’s a large organization,” she said, letting it roll out cautiously. The ground had shifted under her again, like hidden water bubbles under sand as the tides changed. Whatever this was, she thought it only half had to do with her. “But that was not my worry.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” Clint muttered, and shifted himself on the bed, looking off at the door instead of her. “You’d have to care first.” 

This, Natasha supposed, was an entirely fair hit. 

“It’s definitely a bonus though,” he added, face scrunching in thought.

“A bonus to what?” she asked.

“Starting over.” He said it almost idly. 

“I’m starting over?”

“Naw,” he shook his head, looking rueful. “Me.” 

Ah. There was the quicksand; she could feel it tug at her ankle.

“Why?”

He was falling back asleep, his voice slurring with drugs and dreams, and she didn’t think he’d answer for a moment.

“I didn’t exactly play the good agent back there, N’tasha,” he said finally. “Fury came by earlier. Read me the riot act. Busted me back down to probie. Give me a fresh start, he said.”

“Is there such a thing?” she asked. What would a fresh start even look like for her, already in blood up to her neck? 

“I’m beginning to think there isn’t,” Clint sighed. “But I figure that means I get to start again from the bottom… prove...” he was slowing rapidly. “Do it right this time. Bet he regrets… bet they all regret… doing so much for me.” 

“What all did they do?” she asked him, and Clint rolled his head back towards her and gave her a thin smile.

“Everything,” he said softly. “Too much.”

That hurt her, why did that hurt? She’d never been able to give him much, never wanted to give him much-- so why was she freezing now? Clint hadn’t expected it, after all, and she’d long known no one gave you anything you didn’t either earn or pay back later. She’d liked him too much to put him in her debt.

Clint was still talking.

“Better this way,” he slurred. “Let ‘em know I can do it on my own. They won’t make you do it. Not… not you. What a fucking disaster that’d be. You’ll… it’ll be easier. You’re the Black Widow. Should’ve known….” he trailed off, searching for a word, and Natasha found frustration prickling up in herself, as it did occasionally during those sorts of interrogations where the subject was not exactly not cooperating, just too far gone to focus on anything-- pain or point of interest.

But it did seem absurd, even for an operation like SHIELD which likely had rules stacked upon rules, bristling in all directions like a Japanese pod hotel, to sanction Clint by sticking him in a probationary class again. Such a waste of a man who, whatever his failings might have been, had nearly equalled her in the inventive creation of chaos in pursuit of their objectives. Why send him on milk runs? If they cared about protocol over mission success, why not just shoot him, like the Red Room would have? He must be misunderstanding.

Or else she had misunderstood Director Fury, and SHIELD’s choice was entirely one of evils: to waste away or to be wasted in the field.

“Clint, tell me why you think that,” she tried, and got a tired laugh.

“Always figured I was on borrowed time before I fucked up, Natasha. It’s what I do. You know. You of all people. It was either that or they kick me out all together, huh? Got off lucky.”

She narrowed her eyes, tried that glare again, the  _ stupid Hawkeye shut up and listen _ glare, but his eyes were closed and he was drifting off.

“It had better be neither, Clint,” she hissed at his gently snoring form. “You got me into this; it had better be worth my while.”

His only answer was a semi-choked snort, as he settled into sleep. She rubbed her hands on her knees, stood up to pace, ended up by the door, looking out down the long corridors of SHIELD, wondering if it was half so loyal to Clint as he’d been to it even when thinking he was abandoning it.

At least now she knew what she needed to ask Nicholas Fury. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: fallout


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Phil have a... talk... and Nick Fury upends everyone's lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings in this chapter.

“Come in, Ms. Romanova,” Director Fury said, not bothering to turn around. He was as casual as if he’d been expecting her to pop up behind him-- in a wing of the medical facilities to which she was not supposed to have access. She wondered if the nurse in her assigned wing was going to be reprimanded for her escape. It seemed vaguely unfair; she had been perfectly attentive the entire time. She was only one woman-- not nearly enough to be guarding Natasha. One woman alone couldn’t be looking everywhere at once, and Natasha was more than small enough to fit through drop ceilings without bringing them down.

After a moment’s thought, she mentioned that to Director Fury.

He snorted, but didn’t look back at her.

“Yeah, I’ve got a bone to pick with my predecessor about those damn ceilings. There’s such a thing as building something too well. You’re not the first to crawl through ‘em. Still,” he shrugged, “if you’d have tried to get out of medical you’d’ve found they dead-end before you hit the secured doors.”

She considered that for a moment, before asking:

“What would you have done if I’d rendered your nurse unconscious, instead of bothering to crawl through your ceilings?” 

“Depends on how you’d attempted to do the rendering, Ms. Romanova-- and how much of you was left afterwards.”

A slight scrape on the floor behind her made her spin, and she found the nurse standing there, braced. The woman was small and slight as Natasha, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and intent as a shrike when seen up close. She wore her scrubs like a tac suit. 

“Natalia Romanova, Senior Agent Melinda May,” Fury introduced them. He  _ still _ hadn’t turned around, and Natasha assumed he must be making some kind of point. Whatever it was, Natasha found she felt reassured that they had given her a guard suited to her after all-- and that she hadn’t gotten a real nurse in trouble. This woman looked like she could handle whatever came her way.

“Agent May,” Natasha greeted her, and got a little twist of lips in return. She let herself hold May’s glance, found herself caught, and only blinked herself free when Fury shifted behind her.

“Well?” he said.

“She’ll do,” May told him, but her eyes never left Natasha. 

“Field clearance?” he asked.

“I’m not a doctor, sir.”

Natasha decided there was nothing to be gained by following the back and forth of the conversation. She kept herself focused on the agent in front of her. Of the two threats, May was by far the more imminently dangerous.

“That’s not why I’m asking you,” Fury told his agent.

May sighed, long and low, and Natasha thought she caught a warning, maybe a challenge, in her eyes before she turned towards Fury.

“Give her time to settle in first, but yes. She’ll manage. May I go in, sir? I haven’t had a chance to visit.”

Fury moved out of the way to let May pass, pulling the door shut after her. 

Natasha watched through the glass panes as May sat down in the visitor’s chair and settled back into the same rock-solid sort of pose she’d had at the nurse’s corral, her hands folded on her lap and face quiet. 

“Who is he?” Natasha asked Fury, jerking her head at the unconscious patient. He looked entirely unassuming, his face lax, his lashes absurdly long, nearly longer than the fuzz on his scalp. A series of scrapes and bandages covered the left side of his skull.

“Agent Jasper Sitwell,” Fury said, drawing out the name. “Agent Barton’s former supervising officer. And the man who may have saved your lives-- hard to tell in the melee.”

“Has Clint been able to see him?” she asked.

“No,” Fury frowned, “and I should do something about that. Now tell me, Ms. Romanova, what are you doing here?”

“What’s going to happen to Clint?” she asked, and Fury finally turned to look fully at her. There was something soft in his face in the moment he turned that must have been directed at the two agents in the hospital room. He packed it away quickly as he addressed her.

“After the way you left him in that warehouse, why does it matter to you?” 

Natasha found herself dropping her gaze to her feet, and felt a vague sense of outrage that she had done so. She hadn’t intended to react to that dig-- what was the matter with her that she couldn’t keep her composure around these people?

“He thinks you’re going to put him on probation, make him start over, make him,” Natasha shook her head, trying to find the words to make sense of the muddle of Clint’s half-slurred worries, “prove himself again.”

“I’m going to do one of those things all right,” Fury said, “but again, why do you care?”

“Because it would be a waste,” she hissed, making herself meet his eye, pushing some of her frustration into her words. “A waste of his talents, a waste of your time and his-- and if SHIELD is interested in wasting time, I am not interested in SHIELD.”

“What about wasting people?” Fury asked.

Natasha snorted.

“Every organization does that to one extent or another. I only ask for the chance to prove that I am not easily expendable.” 

Agent May shifted in the other room, leaned over Sitwell, and straightened his blanket. Natasha watched them for a moment.

“None of you are easily expendable,” Fury told her, his voice even. “This isn’t the Red Room.”

Natasha didn’t bother to answer that. If it had been the Red Room, she would not have been here, talking to Fury. She would have killed herself by now, or else they would have killed her.

“What is going to happen to Barton?” she asked again. Fury sighed.

“I’m honestly not sure yet,” he said. “I don’t think he can go back to Sitwell right now, and their team-- well, between Budapest and Bahrain, four of the primary members are either in this wing or out of the field for the time being. But he won’t be busted back down to probie, I can guarantee you that. Even if I were interested in making an example of him, that’d be harder on SHIELD than on him.”

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that,” Natasha said. “And me?”

“And you what?”

“Will I start as a probie?” Natasha asked, making herself go with the conversational flow, keep the rhythm of question and response up-- and letting it make her decision for her. 

“I thought I answered that, Ms. Romanova. I don’t waste time, and I try not to waste people.”

“Ms. Romanoff, I think,” Natasha said, letting the name roll off her tongue. “Natasha Romanoff. Easier for Americans to pronounce. Your people badly need to work on your accents.”

“You’ve met the wrong ones then,” Fury said genially. “So tell me, Ms. Romanoff, do you agree with Agent May?”

“In what respect?” she asked.

“Do you think you’re ready for the field?”

Did she? Natasha paused. If she said yes, she was sure there would still be weeks or months of training and test runs, tight on the leash. Whoever he assigned her to would need to know she was not going to stab them in the back, and she would need to know she wasn’t going to strangle them for incompetence. 

She could promise Fury all of this, she could tell Fury that the drugs were out of her system and her thoughts were clear, and it would likely pass muster. No need to expose the cracks in her head.

However, if she did that, the cracks would still be there.

“I can tell my nightmares from my waking world,” was what she said, and pretended she wasn’t holding her breath. At least no one could accuse her of dishonesty, later.

“And your real memories from false?” Fury asked. 

When Natasha looked up, his face had gone soft again, and it was terrible.

“What makes you say that?” she breathed.

“I did tell you, Ms. Romanoff, we were uniquely placed to offer you a position. Thanks to the… trail... you left behind you, Agent Coulson was able to send a team to retrieve a large number of Red Room notes and even equipment from the facilities you destroyed, or had not gotten to yet. If you’re still experiencing the aftereffects of brainwashing, we can try to help. We have plenty of experience.”

“I’m  functioning well enough,” Natasha told him, which she knew was not the answer he’d asked for. But surely it was the one he’d meant.

“I’ll trust you on that,” Fury told her. “In return, I’d like you to trust me when I say I’m not interested in you ‘functioning well enough,’ I’m interested in you doing what you need to feel whole. Put it down to me not liking waste, if you want.”

He said it so plainly she nearly thought he meant it.

“I will… keep that in mind,” she murmured, and went back to watching his agents with him.

 

\----

 

Phil Coulson knocked before he came in, then waited by the window so Clint could see him and prepare. For some reason, the courtesy sent a thin shiver of rage through Clint. Coulson’s face was a blank, no crinkle to his eyes or furrow to his eyebrows. Nothing to indicate this was anything other than a professional visit.

A few days ago, Clint would have bought the act. Would have assumed that his stunt in Budapest had wiped out any trace of the connection they’d made in Arizona, just like he’d dreaded. Had reset them to the days before Clint had realized there’d ever been anything more than professional respect between them-- or worse, given that Clint had forfeited the right to any respect from Coulson when he’d jumped. 

Unfortunately for Clint-- or maybe for Coulson-- Director Fury had responded to Clint’s nurse-delivered plea for more information on Jasper’s status with a copy of the mission debrief and an mp3 player with headphones so he could listen to the coms records for himself. It had brought the memories he’d half-lost with his concussion flooding back, along with everything he’d missed while he’d been laid out unconscious in the middle of a melee.

Over and over, Clint had heard himself begging Jasper to understand, to talk to Fury. Heard Coulson’s reply, Jasper’s screech when he’d seen Clint jump off the roof. Heard Jasper call in Alpha and Charlie teams, using every curse he’d ever cultivated as he yelled that Barton was down, he was  _ down. _ Worse yet, he’d had to listen, frozen, while Coulson lost his cool shard by shard, until he was yelling into the comm  _ Barton stop, Barton, Clint, Clint, goddamn, Clint, Chris, no, damnit no. Please, no. _

Clint’s hands had started to shake as he’d heard Coulson’s voice go hoarse, telling Alpha and Charlie to hurry, damnit, take them out, take them  _ all _ out, just get them, goddamnit, just get him safe. Heard him call in Bravo team, and heard Victoria Hand’s calm clipped tones as she took over the op.

He hadn’t intended to hurt Coulson-- to hurt  _ Phillip _ \-- as badly as all that. Hadn’t thought he  _ could _ hurt Coulson that badly. 

It was terrifying, honestly, and he wasn’t entirely sure why.

No-- he wasn’t sure what he’d ever done to cause Coulson to crack like that. He might’ve been able to put it down to Coulson still being off his game after Bahrain--

Except for that “Chris.” 

That was way too fucking personal to put down to anything but Coulson actually, personally, caring about his sorry ass. He knew he didn’t deserve it, and probably Coulson now agreed with that assessment. 

In his muddled mental state, that revelation had been the last straw.

Let the security cameras show how hard Clint had cried. Maybe it would give Fury some sense of satisfaction. 

Clint had managed to wipe away the evidence of his breakdown before the nurses came for their regular application of the blood pressure cuff, poking of IVs, and briskly efficient trip to the bathroom. Not that erasing the tear tracks did him any good. Coulson’s rasp-- replicated in Clint’s very much not innocent daydreams of Phillip for years-- had been seared into his inner ear, drained down the back of his eyes, and scoured his lungs. 

And now here was the man himself, both too late and way too soon.

“Agent Barton.” Coulson spoke briskly as he came in the door, indifference stamped all over his long, handsome face, but all Clint could see, after hearing the comms recording, was Phillip, young and red-faced with passion and frustration. 

Phillip had always been there underneath, hadn’t he? And Coulson had hid who he was, and hid it deliberately. Not out of some vague sense of fair play, either, like he’d tried to pass it off when Clint had confronted him. Why he’d done it, Clint couldn’t begin to guess-- shouldn’t, if his track record on the subject was any indication. Clearly he hadn’t known either Coulson or Phillip at all.

“Agent Coulson,” Clint said, trying to match him even for even, sure he was failing miserably. He shifted, settling the covers higher around him and hoping it looked natural, not like he was suddenly self-conscious about his too-big, too-thin hospital gown. If only Coulson’d waited one more day, till Clint had the damned tubes out and could move how he wanted. “What can I do for you?”

Coulson’s lip twitched, and he turned away to look at the file on the tray by Clint’s bed. 

“Fury said you had something for Agent Sitwell. I came to get it.”

“Yeah,” Clint winced. “But I’d like to give it to him myself, if I can? It’s… it’s an apology.”

Coulson’s eyes darted to his, then away, and he paled further, like he was icing over. Everything about him seemed to have stretched and tightened and faded since Clint had seen him last, retreating from Clint as if anything left in the open was in danger. 

“Given that Agent Sitwell still hasn’t fully recovered consciousness, I don’t see how that will be possible,” he said.

“What?” Clint asked faintly. “He what?”

“Agent Sitwell’s injuries were severe enough that we couldn’t transport him for several days. He’s here now, but still in serious condition.” Coulson told him, and Clint could hear the rasp come back into his voice. “He’s expected to recover… but not soon.”

_ Oh god _ , Clint thought. He’d known someone was coming up behind him, ready to stop him. And since he’d nearly reached the limits of what his arrows could do without possibly also taking out Tasha or letting her get killed before he could get all his shots in, he’d figured it was time to go.

What he hadn’t realized, but really should have, was that it’d been Jasper scrambling towards Clint on the rooftop, too late to pull him back from the edge. Jasper following him down the fast line, at Clint’s back like he’d always promised Clint he would be (even if he’d always said it with hamburgers instead of words). 

“Goddamnit Jas,” Clint managed through the sudden burning in his eyes. “I didn’t want-- he shouldn’t have.... That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You don’t say.” Coulson crossed his arms like he was expecting some kind of explosion. “But what the hell did you expect him to do? Leave you?”

“I-- I didn’t ask anyone to come after me!” Clint snapped back, straining upwards from his hospital bed even though his tailbone, already aching from days on his back, protested. 

“That's not the point, and you know it. This is Jasper we're talking about, did it not cross your mind even once that he would do anything to save you?” Color was coming back to Coulson’s face; Clint decided maybe he actually preferred the ice.

“No! I mean--” Clint broke off, because that implied he didn't think Jasper was exactly the kind of jackass who would leap off a building-- or rappel down a cliff-- to save his friend. “I didn't exactly have time to think….”

“You were supposed to be part of a team, C--Barton. That was what you agreed to when you came to SHIELD.” Coulson was blazing now, though not loud-- just passionately angry. Vibrating with it really, and so close to the young, broad soldier Clint had met in Miami that it was painful to see. “And you couldn't spare a moment to think about what they would do? You didn’t want Jasper getting hurt, maybe you could have shown him half the trust he shows you and waited. Or at least warned us-- him-- that you couldn't instead of jumping off a building moments after finally spilling your big Black Widow secret. Which, if we're on the subject--”

“Oh.” Clint felt his earlier irritation come rushing back to swamp him. “You do not want to talk about trust and withholding information with me right now, Coulson.” 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Coulson pulled himself up, either taken aback or playing it well.

“Like you don’t fucking know!” Clint cried. “C’mon,  _ sir _ , think real hard.”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never deliberately concealed mission critical information from you.”

“Oh, it’s mission-critical information now, is it?” If Coulson was gonna move the target on him, he was gonna quickly find Clint could still hit it. “Okay, fine, let’s go with that. ‘Cause if I didn’t tell anyone I knew the Black Widow-- which I didn’t even  _ know she was _ \-- let’s talk about who decided to let me into SHIELD without making me give my ex-partner up, huh? ‘Cause I hear that you’re the one who made that brilliant call, so you really gonna stand here all self-righteous like I’m the only one to blame for how this all went down?”

“You have a problem with that call, Agent?” Coulson asked him, sounding genuinely confused. “Because at the time my analysis suggested it was the only way to get you to come in. Do you disagree?”

Clint shook his head. If Coulson could look confused instead of mad, he wasn’t cutting close enough. Clint  _ wanted _ mad, wanted to rattle Coulson until he shook loose a genuine emotion. If he could crack in front of the whole damn Ops center, he could damn well do it for Clint.

“Would you have made that call for any  _ other _ recruit,  _ Phillip _ ?” he asked, even though the question tore his chest coming out. Waiting for the answer felt as infinitely long as it did when he waited for a mark to come into his sights.

“Is… is  _ that _ what this is about?” Coulson took a step back, looking like he’d just been punched. “Do you really think-- why the hell does it matter who I would or wouldn’t have made it for? Because it was  _ me _ ? If Jasper had made the call instead, or if Fury had suggested it, would that have made it all right to you?”

_ Shit _ . That was  _ not _ a denial. Fury’d been right. All this time, when he’d thought he was earning all the breaks that came his way, Coulson’d been secretly putting the fix in. 

“Yeah, actually, it matters a lot,” Clint said, exhaustion sweeping over him-- one last desperate attempt of his body to shut him down before he could mess shit up more, probably. Well, too bad, body, he didn’t think he could stop himself now if he banged his head into a wall. “It matters a whole fucking hell of a lot that you’re standing here lecturing me on trust when you lied to me.”

“I never lied to you.” It was vehement, so fierce, Clint almost believed it. “What do you-- when d’you think I lied?”

“Three months ago in your office,” Clint told him, trying not to picture the scene, the way Coulson’s face had shut down when Clint had brought up Miami. “When you said you wanted to give me a fresh start.”

At the time, it had been a fucking lifeline to Clint, a sign Coulson had understood his desperate need for a second chance at this life thing. Now, it felt like every other lie he’d ever been told, dragging hard at his ankle trying to pull him down.

“I  _ did  _ want to give you a fresh start.” Coulson was still bewildered, but finally growing angry again. He telegraphed it in a way Clint’d never expected to see from his buttoned-down, wry, sometime-commanding officer, shaking his head and starting to pace. “That’s all-- that’s what I wanted. No hidden agendas.”

“No hidden  _ agendas? _ Damn, sir, I’ve heard more convincing lies from twelve year old con artists.”

“If you think insulting me is going to keep me from talking about Jasper--” Ah, yeah, there was the anger. 

“You can’t make me feel worse about Jasper than I already do,” Clint grumped. “No, this is about you, and your ‘fresh start’ bullshit. If you wanted to give me a chance to prove myself, why did you get me into flight school early? Why’d you make psych get me a new therapist? If I was proving myself, why’d you do enough shit for me that, apparently, the entire base thought I was your… your  _ favorite _ ? And if you didn’t have any hidden agendas, why am I apparently the  _ only _ person at SHIELD who didn’t know any of this? You wanna talk about trust? Because that kind of thing could give a guy a complex. Could make him think that his field commander didn’t actually think he could hack it at SHIELD without help. Or, hell, could make him wonder if he should trust his field commander with anything when he was pretending he was above it all but all the time he’s… he’s  been….”

Clint broke off, stomach roiling. He couldn’t find a way to end that sentence that didn’t give away how much it’d hurt, finding out he’d lost the opportunity to ever impress Phillip-- finding out just how unimpressed Phillip had been with him, that he’d thought going behind Clint’s back to get him favors was necessary. 

What the hell had Coulson been trying to do, anyway? Distance himself from Clint, from everything they’d done in Miami? But then why’d Coulson do anything for him at all? Could it be pity? Did he want to make it up to the poor messed-up kid he’d fucked, without getting his hands dirty? Jesus fuck, did he think he  _ owed _ Clint something for that?  

“All the time what?” Coulson asked, sounding like he’d rather not know.

“Compromised,” Clint whispered. It was the best he could do.

“Compro--” The hitch in Coulson’s voice was unwelcome confirmation. “That’s a word I never expected from you, Barton.”

“What, you think I don’t know how to use my big boy bureaucrat vocabulary?” Clint asked, nettled. How fucking dare Coulson anyway. Like he didn’t know Jasper’d made sure Clint’s education in advanced SHIELD CYA training was thorough.

“I know you do,” Coulson snapped. “And you know as well as I do what a meaningless word it is. Just what the hell bad judgement do you think I actually exhibited, huh? I got you into flight school, is that honestly your complaint? I cannot why you have an issue with getting  _ training _ , of all things-- I never got you anything you didn’t need or earn.”

“But I  _ didn’t _ earn it, did I?” Clint protested, leaning forward far enough that his IVs started to tug out of his already-sore skin. “If I’d earned it you wouldn’t have had to pull strings. I know I didn’t have the time served or the quals. Put a risk like me in a quinjet? Now there’s a case of bad judgement.”

“You weren’t a goddamn risk and it’s called discretion, Barton. Commanding officers are supposed to use it.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Commanding fucking-- that makes it worse. So my commanding officer puts me into flight school even though I’m a flight risk, even though I hadn’t done anything to earn the spot. You know what that looks like to the outside,  _ sir _ ? It looks like I earned it some other way, and I’m not liking any of the other ways that could be.” 

(And now was not the time, really absolutely not the time, to be thinking about some of those possible ways. It made Clint angry, how easy it was, after all these years, to remember what the dips of Phillip Coulson’s hips looked like when Clint was on his knees in front of them. How hot, even now, he found the memory of the shadows and sweat gathered in the hollows.)

“Don’t be….” The brief pause suggested Coulson might also be having unfortunate Miami memories, and probably unwelcome ones, judging by his full-body shudder. “Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone knows we’re not friendly outside missions.”

“Yeah, don’t I know it.” The bitterness slipped through Clint’s lips before he could stop himself. 

“Excuse me, how is that now all my fault?” Coulson’s own voice matched his, acidic enough to burn. “If you’d wanted to talk, you knew where my office was. You could have come by anytime you wanted, if you’d wanted to--” Coulson flicked a brief glance at a corner near the ceiling, where a little security camera was nestled in its all-seeing bubble. Abruptly, he moved closer, dropping into the chair next to Clint’s bed and leaning forward, twisting so his back was to the cameras. “--if you’d wanted to hash out the past. I was trying to give you space; though apparently I shouldn’t ever try to give you anything. You knew where to find me. You just didn’t bother.”

This close up, Clint was startled to realize Coulson was actually shaking with the effort of holding himself together. He’d never seen Coulson so wrecked before-- well, not outside of a mid-price hotel room. He’d seen Phillip’s hands tremble that way for different reasons. But never with  _ that _ look on his face, that on anyone else would have been resentment. Except Coulson had  _ no fucking right _ to be resenting Clint in this case. Clint leaned over to tell him so.

“How the hell,” he whispered, so fast it came out sloppy, “was I supposed to come  _ chat _ with you about the past when I didn’t even realize it was  _ you _ in it?”

Coulson’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion and Clint felt his own raise in response. Did he really have to spell it out? Couldn’t he keep this one tiny piece of dignity and not have to flat-out say he’d been concentrating too goddamn much on Phillip’s ass (and shoulders, and hands, and kindness) to recognize his  _ face _ when he saw it again? He’d hoped Coulson would never have to know just how blind Clint’d been.

“I  _ did _ ask,” he said plaintively, much to his own disgust. “When I finally realized you were… were you. I asked. Why you hadn’t said... anything. What it meant. And you said… you said…” he trailed off, because Coulson’s eyebrows, his entire face, had gone from scrunched-up confusion to wide horror. He sat back so fast he rattled the chair. 

“You didn’t-- until-- you-- I--” Coulson gave a quick, desperate glance at the corner where the security camera lurked, and then he dropped his gaze, staring off to his lower right just about where Clint usually found himself looking when the other shoe was dropping. “Oh,” he whispered. “I wish I’d known that.”

He looked so genuinely shocked that Clint wanted to comfort him, to take it back, babble out some kind of mitigating explanation--  _ I just wasn’t expecting; you’d gotten smaller, older-- not old, I don’t mean old, just um, mature; you looked so sad I didn’t think you could be my Phillip.  _ But honestly, Coulson wouldn’t have been sitting there looking pole-axed if he’d just fucking said something to Clint in the first place. Wasn’t like he’d had years worth of stupid hero fantasies and daydreams riding on it like Clint.

So Coulson could just sit there and be bitter. Lord knew Clint was. 

Anyway, nothing Clint could have said was anything Fury or anyone else on the other end of that camera needed to share. 

After a moment, Coulson dropped his elbows onto his knees and head into his hands, and gave a deep sigh. He dragged his hands down off his jowls as if he was trying to wipe the shock off his face then looked back up at Clint, leaning in so close that Clint’s skin prickled. 

“If I’d known that, I would have--” he started, and then shook himself silent. “No. No, sorry, that-- is irrelevant. We can’t change it now.” He shrugged, speaking as much to himself as Clint. “Anyway, I should have expected it. Hell-- it was probably for the best-- for you, anyway.”

It was fortunate for Coulson that he was on the side with Clint’s IV, because it meant Clint didn’t just up and backhand him.

“Why?” he spat instead, “because I got all this shit I didn’t deserve? That’s why it ‘worked out well’ for me? ‘Cause it sure as fuck doesn’t feel like it.”

“For fuck’s sake are we back to that?” Coulson asked, sounding unfairly like Phillip as he swore. Hell--  _ looking _ unfairly like Phillip, what with all the actual emotions flashing across his face. “How many ways do I have to tell you, you earned  _ all _ of that.”

“I could have done it on my own!” Clint cried, while his thoughts echoed Coulson’s. Back here again? Were they always going to find themselves circling this, picking at long-cleaned bones?

“I know you could,” Coulson assured Clint. Which was nice for  _ Coulson, _ but Clint didn’t fucking believe him-- and even if he had, thanks to Coulson the rest of SHIELD clearly didn’t feel the same way. Clint squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, against the sudden burn.

“If you knew,” he rasped, “why the hell did you do all that shit for me? It wasn’t out of  _ professional interest.” _

“I told you already; it was entirely within my scope as your supervising officer’s CO, and my professional judgement,” Coulson said, so pat he must’ve practiced it.

Christ. Did Agent Pants-on-Fire really think he could bluff his way out of this one anymore? He hadn’t fooled anyone but Clint for ages-- and he wasn’t fooling Clint any longer. Clint pointed his IV-free hand at the mp3 player still sitting on his rolling tray.

“Oh yeah? You wanna tell that to the Agent Coulson I heard screaming over the comms when I jumped? Yelling my… yelling at me over and over? Was that guy’s interest  _ just professional _ ? Was it the kind of thing I didn’t need-- didn’t deserve-- to know about?”

Coulson was silent so long, staring at the mp3 player as if it had personally stuck a knife in his back, that Clint started to worry. If Coulson didn’t snap out of it soon, Clint was pretty sure he was going to get a visit from the personnel in PsyOps, to ask him how the hell he’d managed to break a Senior Agent of SHIELD so completely. And while at any other time that might have been morbidly amusing, Clint didn’t want to have to explain any part of this conversation to anyone outside this room, ever.

Unfortunately, Coulson’s reaction was all the confirmation Clint had needed, as if it hadn’t already been sickeningly obvious from the audio file. Just thinking about that  _ Chris _ had hurt. He’d had a brief moment where he’d thought maybe it  _ was _ just Coulson tangled up about having fucked him. That didn’t last long-- Coulson’d never get so messed up over something as simple as sex. Which left him no closer to an answer.

“Well?” he hissed, when Coulson finally tugged his gaze away from the mp3 player. Coulson darted a look down at his own hands, then the bed rail, Clint’s water cup-- anywhere but at Clint himself.

“Barton,” he sighed, flinching. 

Clint leaned forward, hoping it’d encourage him to form actual words.

Coulson met his eyes finally and then raised his hands, signalling  _ being observed _ with a quick flick of his glance towards the security cameras. As if Clint might need a reminder that Coulson didn’t want anyone even having the thought cross their minds for a hot minute that he might have had a past with Clint. Well-- a past with Chris. In that, Clint had to agree-- the last thing he needed was the SHIELD gossip mill having fucking  _ proof _ that they’d been, well, fucking-- no matter how long ago it’d been. Or how brief.

“Yeah,” Clint responded to the hand signal. “I know. Real convenient for you, huh? Wouldn’t want you to have to have to fucking talk, right? What’s your damage, Coulson? If I did something, don’t you think I deserve to know?” 

“You didn’t-- it’s not you, it’s not anything you-- it just… ” Coulson trailed off, searching for words. “I just wanted to help, and I didn’t think you’d accept it if I… if  _ I _ offered it. But I’ve always….You looked like you needed some--I didn't think you'd gotten much in your life. Help, I mean.”   
As near as Clint could tell, Coulson wasn’t actually trying to be an asshole, he was just being honest for once. Clint’d been right earlier-- it’d been pity after all, for a kid who’d once gotten on his knees for Phillip, saved his life, then screamed at him and run away. That Coulson had a weird kink for saving strays wasn’t news. Clint hadn’t realized he was on the list for flea-dips and neutering, that was all.

Of course, given how wrung-out Clint had been when Jasper Sitwell had dragged him into SHIELD-- not to mention how much of a hot mess Chris had been in Miami-- how could he blame Coulson for thinking that he needed all the help he could get? If Clint was balking, that was all on him. Still, hadn’t that been his choice to make?

“Yeah,” he sighed, “I get it: you think I’m a fuck-up. Not exactly a surprise. But I’m my own fuck-up, okay? I didn’t want your help.” It felt like he’d said that before. Actually-- he  _ had _ said it before, or Chris had, all those years ago in a tacky taqueria in Miami. Picking on the bones of old arguments, indeed. “You know, there’s one good thing to come out of this, anyway.”

“What’s that?” Coulson rasped.

“I get a second chance to prove I can make it at SHIELD without anyone putting the fix in for me. I’m pretty damn good at my job, okay? I don’t need you.”

Coulson’s flinch was pretty fucking satisfying, Clint had to admit. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he protested. “I never thought you … just because you  _ can _ doesn’t mean… Goddamnit.” Coulson appeared to give up searching for words in favor of burying his face in his hands. 

Clint leaned forwards, morbidly curious. Just because he could didn’t mean  _ what _ ? 

“Coulson?” he whispered.

“I thought you’d understand, after we… talked… in Arizona.” Coulson said, muffled into his palms.

After Arizona. 

Coulson clearly had enough bite left in him to take Clint down too. PsyOps was gonna love this: two agents broken without a hand laid on ‘em.

Clint’d been so focused on Miami he’d forgotten the last time-- the most recent time-- Coulson had seen him broken and helpless, when he’d had to literally prop Clint up. 

In Arizona, Clint’d nearly drowned and Jas had rescued him and Coulson had been forced to half-drag him through the desert night. Caught in a muddle of exhaustion and head injury and heartbreak, Clint had ended up vomiting up all his sordid history with Bobbi. Laid out all his worst failures against people he’d loved, while Coulson had been unable to turn away without leaving Clint’s sorry ass in the cold sand. Topped it off by having a panic attack trying to cross a fucking stream.

He’d hardly been the picture of a guy who could shovel his own shit. Not like Coulson himself, whose own story that night had started with him putting a gun in his own mouth and ended with him remaking entire departments in order to keep that from ever happening to someone else at SHIELD. Of the two of them, Coulson had come out of their exchange of horror stories by far the bigger man. He’d put his shit behind him, used it make himself stronger-- while Clint’d just proven how badly he was still wallowing in his.

When Coulson had sent him to California, like Clint’d asked, to recover, Clint had thought it’d meant Coulson trusted him to know his own mind. When he’d come back, and Coulson’d only been willing to acknowledge that night in the desert by telling Clint to just keep putting one step in front of the other, Clint’d taken that as a sign of trust too.

Clint was a complete and total fucking idiot, as had been demonstrated more than once before.

Clearly that night had convinced Coulson that Clint was still as broken as he had ever been-- maybe even that he was never going to be whole on his own. Not someone Coulson thought he could trust to make his own future. Did Coulson regret it then, all the time he’d put into getting Clint favors? 

Well fuck that. Maybe it was true-- the sinking feeling in Clint’s stomach was arguing that it was-- but he would be damned before he was going to let Phillip tell him that. Not after the role the man had played in his daydreams over the years-- how Phillip-the-soldier would see Clint in his shiny Agent Barton gear, and how his admiration would shine.

Admiration was apparently off the table, but Clint could still be shiny-ass Agent Barton. He got to keep that much of his fantasy, goddamnit. If Coulson didn’t think Clint was capable, Coulson could go fuck himself and like it. 

Luckily, Coulson’s head was still buried in his hands so he couldn’t see whatever horrible face Clint’d just made. He managed-- barely-- not to whimper as any control he'd had over himself washed away in a flood of memories. He reached out with a shaking hand and grabbed his water, sucking until the cup was empty and so was his face. If he had to talk about Arizona, had to hear Coulson make it all perfectly clear, he was gonna be sick after all.

“You know,” he said conversationally, once he was sure his voice wouldn’t waver, “if that’s how messed up you think I am, you really are a poor excuse for a commanding officer. If you thought that, I’m the last guy you should be sending on missions. I could trip over my dick and fucking shoot someone. And you know? If I could move, this is the part where I would walk out that door and slam it behind me.” 

Coulson picked his head up and looked at the door, then back at Clint. He’d managed to reset his own face, too, and it was pale but no longer broadcasting everything. Clint glared at him. 

“But I’m stuck here,” he continued, gesturing to his IVs. “So if you’re so set on helping me, Agent Coulson, if you’re so set on using your goddamn discretion as my superior, why don’t you do something I’d actually want for once and walk out that door yourself?”

Coulson sat there staring at him so long Clint began to wonder if he’d just stay there till the night nurses came in and moved him. Either the resolution or the greenish tinge to Clint’s face must have finally made Coulson’s decision for him, because he came back to life as suddenly as if he’d received an electric shock. 

To Clint’s confusion, Coulson nodded, firming up his jaw and drawing himself together. Then he stood, rolling to his feet with deliberate ease and shooting his cuffs like he did each time he rose at the end of a pre-op briefing meeting. His face was meant to be blank, Clint thought, but he hadn’t quite made it. Something was burning in his eyes.

Clint found himself frozen in turn, waiting. He might have leaned back just a tiny bit, away from that heat.

After one last long, challenging look, Coulson tipped his head to Clint, spun on his heel, and stalked to the door. The roll of his hips dredged up still more unfortunate memories of Miami, and Clint had to bite his lip hard to keep his jaw from dropping.

When he reached the door, Coulson flung it open and sailed through with his head high. He turned back in the hall to look at Clint with great deliberation, his hand still on the knob.

“Hrmph,” he sniffed, dramatic as if he were wearing furs or something-- and then he slammed the door.

It was actually a lot more satisfying than Clint had thought it would be.

 

\---

 

Phil walked straight into the nearest restroom and leaned his head against the mirror. He had to drag his body back under control; the last thing he could afford at the moment was to show public weakness. He risked a glance up at the mirror to see just how much was showing on his face.

He looked forty. Fifty, even. Drawn, still blotchy from the conflicting attempts of his blood to rush both to and from his cheeks at once. The one place his blood had seemed most determined to pool had been in the very  _ last _ place he’d needed it to be. Unfortunately, even in the middle of an argument, throttling the memories of Clint-- of Chris, young and golden and velvet-lipped-- on his back and staring upward was a lost cause when the man in question kept bringing them back up. Phil’d spent the last part of their conversation half-hard and wholly enraged at himself for it. 

He’d known his elaborate system of defenses, set up precisely to protect Barton from Phil’s own personal demons, would crumble under too much prodding. Just hadn’t expected them to be undermined quite so quickly-- then again, he would never have guessed that Clint apparently not only hadn’t known Phil had been trying to keep away for his benefit, he hadn’t even recognized Phil as the man he’d fucked for five days straight then saved the life of, only about five years back. 

But damnit, how dare Barton throw Arizona back in his face? Phil had practically puked out his regrets, his weaknesses-- that small part of himself that was still stuck in an empty bedroom on a bed with cold sheets, holding a gun between his teeth-- that night in order to help Barton. No matter how disgusted he’d clearly been with Phil at that point, that had not been called for.

The water in the sink was only a little cold, but it was enough to soothe his burning eyes and draw some of the exhaustion away from them. Phil splashed briefly before blotting his face with paper towels. 

Maybe that was why Phil had made such a production of stalking out of the room, practically turning it into a flounce for Barton’s benefit.  _ Here. If that’s what you want, choke on it _ . It was disturbing just how good it had felt, something unfurling inside his chest. At least he had the embarrassment as well as the improvident arousal to blame for the fact that he’d let himself go, breaking down in a way that was going to have Fury considering benching him forever, once he saw the tapes.

If he were Nick, he had to admit he’d do it. Speaking of Nick-- Phil caught a glimpse of his watch as he dried his hands off and dumped the damp towels in the trash. He was supposed to be in the Director’s office right now, and the last thing he needed was Fury pissed off preemptively. Phil slammed his way out of the restroom and stalked down the halls.

As he opened the door to Fury’s office, deliberately being measured about it, Phil heard Alexander Pierce’s voice coming out of the speakerphone, thin and lacking the lower register it picked up in person.

“-- tell the Council, as  long as you’re sure, Nick. I think we can get them to go along, but you’re going to be fighting about ten other agencies to keep her.”

“Well, that’s my problem, isn’t it?” Nick Fury asked, leaning back in his chair and glancing up to greet Phil with a raised eyebrow before turning back to the phone. Both he and Maria Hill were frowning at the phone as if they expected Pierce to crawl out of it at any moment. 

Phil pulled up his usual chair and sat, as quietly as he could. 

“You know I’ll back you,” Pierce was saying. “If only because of the way it cracked open the Red Room for us. Who ran that data down?”

“Coulson,” Fury said, and nodded at him to speak.

“It was easy enough,” Phil said, leaning forward towards the phone himself and grateful to settle back into his suit and his agently self. “Once we knew what we were looking for, we could follow her trail of destruction backwards and reconstruct from there. We’ve already got agents on the ground to see if there’s still anything useful left at the hospital, for instance.”

“It’s been years,” Pierce protested, then stopped. “Still. I appreciate the thoroughness, Agent Coulson, and I know the Council will too. Very good work-- and to your Agent Barton. Even if the Black Widow herself turns out not to be trustworthy, we’ve gotten a deal.”

“Oh, I’m fairly sure she’s not a double agent-- right now, anyway,” Phil said. He’d been up practically around the clock since Natalia Alianovna Romanova had been dragged, unconscious, into Alpha Team’s van, trying to run her past to earth. He still had only the barest outline, but it strongly suggested that she’d escaped from the Red Room then turned to burn it to ashes behind her, root and branch. 

“Well that  _ will _ be the test, won’t it?” 

Maria rolled her eyes, and Phil gave her a quick glance, doing his best to remind her via eyebrow that she’d said the same thing just two days ago, before he’d dumped the list of ex-Red Room personnel who’d recently died under suspiciously unsuspicious circumstances on her along with a precis of what each one had-- he suspected-- done. Afterwards, she’d just sighed and said she’d get a hire packet together. 

She let him know she’d received the message with another quick eyeroll, then turned pointedly back to the phone. They went another few rounds with Pierce, before he finally seemed actually, not just rhetorically, placated.

“Who have you got working with her?” Pierce asked finally, “I’d like to send them a fifth of something nice, this is going to be a politically sensitive assignment. If the least word gets out confirming some of her suspected kills you’re going to have all kinds of agencies coming after her. Not to mention the Council is going to have questions about her fitness for duty, especially since you’re not sending her through the academy.”

“Luckily the Council gets no say in  _ how _ I rehabilitate my former assassin now that I have her,” Fury sighed, “I’d take her out back and put her out of her misery-- or let her put me out of mine-- if they tried to make her go through Ops.” 

Pierce’s chuckle was, Phil thought, a little  _ too _ delighted, considering the subject matter.

“Naw,” Fury continued when Pierce was finished, “you don’t need to worry. I’ve got Coulson on it.”

Phil sat straight up and stared at Fury, who kept his blind eye deliberately turned towards him. (The coward.)

“Your troubleshooter. Appropriate. But how is he going to have time? Thought he was running your X-Files knock-off division, Nick.”

“Oh I’m taking him off all that,” Fury waved it away. “After Budapest I think it’s best all around if I move him into special projects for a while. It’ll give him time to concentrate full time on Red Room recovery while Romanoff heals.” 

“I wondered if there were going to be consequences from that op. Not that I disagree with your call, Coulson, but the Council-- well, you understand the game.” Pierce didn’t wait for Phil to find a response to that before pressing onwards. “And Barton?”

“Barton,” Fury sighed, folding his hands over his stomach and leaning back, “is… a puzzle I spent some time considering. Way too damn valuable to kick out, but I can’t just let it go. You can tell the Council I put him under my eye, where he can’t pull any funny business, while I evaluate his fitness. About time he learned there are consequences for pulling shit like that.” 

Phil found a knot he hadn’t known was in his spine unwinding at that. The irony de-ruffled a few more of his feathers. If Barton thought this would make SHIELD as a whole  _ less _ inclined to see him as a favorite (which was absurd on the face of it-- anyone who’d ever seen him shoot would know he’d earned his place) he was in for a very rude awakening.

“That is… lenient of you,” Pierce said, and Phil’s shoulders reknotted themselves. “I’d have thought Ops?”

“Again, Alexander, I’d prefer to take him out back myself,” Fury said. “He’s not any more fit for it than Romanoff is. And I don’t damn well have time to waste with it. I want the three of them off my hands and back in the field as soon as possible.

“Back in the-- oh.” Phil decided he could quickly grow to hate Pierce’s chuckle. “Oh I see now. Remove them all from the command structure, put them directly under you… and then when the eyes are off them, you have that strike team you always wanted. The one that only answers to you. Impressive, Nick. I look forward to seeing the Council’s faces when they realize what you’ve pulled.”

It took Phil far longer than it should have to understand what it meant, though since his brain was attempting to shut itself down in self-defense, it was perhaps understandable. A strike team. Romanoff, Barton-- and himself. Maria was watching Phil as he assimilated this and started choking.  _ No. No no no.  _ He thought of Barton as he’d just left him, red-faced and shaking, in his bed. His hospital bed.

“Coulson,” Pierce said, and Phil swallowed hard and tried to make himself breathe, “Condolences. Not just Romanoff, Barton too. How are you still working for this shifty bastard? Bourbon or scotch?”

“Your choice,” Phil croaked. “I always trust your judgement on these matters.”

That was the last thing he understood of the phone call. He was too busy considering all the ways in which this was going to be a horrible, horrible failure.

“I thought that went well,” Maria said when Pierce finally hung up. Her words dropped like rocks into the muddy waters of Phil’s mind. 

“Urk,” Phil said, which earned him a sharp glance from Nick. 

“I thought it went very well,” Nick said, “all things considered. Alexander will have our backs, and he doesn’t seem too worried about the Council-- though time will only tell. Longer they take before they realize what exactly I’ve done, harder it is for ‘em to fuck it all up. Phil, you need a drink or something?”

“Yeah,” Phil managed, and then pretended that he’d gotten what he wanted when Nick poured him a glass of water. He didn’t think he fooled either Nick or Maria, especially not from the way Maria was smirking at him.

“Well what did you think was gonna happen, Phil?” Nick asked when he’d pulled himself together. “Can’t risk Romanoff in the common pool, you and Maria both told me that. Can’t leave  _ Barton _ where he is right now, either, not unless I want every dumbass asset in SHIELD deciding they can go rogue any time they want.”

Maria shuddered.

“Thank you for sparing us all that. I’m glad it’s turned out this way, but what the hell was Barton thinking, saving her? That’s a hell of a risk to take.”

Phil opened his mouth, shut it again, and looked at Nick, who seemed far more engrossed in poking at the latest emails popping up on his screen.

“That she… needed saving, I presume?” he told Maria.

“Yes, but why? Did he have inside knowledge he hasn’t told us about, or is it just their past?”

“Maria--” Phil started, and then stopped and closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to find his footing in a minefield. He supposed Barton  _ could _ have jumped off a rooftop just to save the woman he’d once been intimate with-- just like he’d jumped off a roof in Miami to save Phil. Whether he had or not, Barton clearly didn’t want anything to do with either of them afterwards-- a commonality between Phil and the Black Widow that was something he’d tried not to think about for the last few days as he’d done a quick dig through her dirty laundry. 

“How’d Barton take the news she’s on board now?” Maria continued, taking pity on his disarranged mind. 

“I, uh--” Oh, right. He’d never gotten to that part of the message he’d had for Barton. Funny, given how much he’d been dreading watching Barton’s face, how he hadn’t been able to decide whether it’d be worse if he perked up or if he flinched. If only that had turned out to be the worst thing he’d faced. “I didn’t get to that part. We got distracted talking about Agent Sitwell.”

“Oh,” Maria frowned. “Well, guess he’ll find out soon enough. Director, I’m going to go make sure the paperwork goes through before the WSC can find a reason to hold it up. Phil, got any objections?”

“This is a really bad idea?” Phil tried, and she snorted.

“Actually? I kinda like it. If anyone can tell if Barton’s compromised, or if the Black Widow’s playing us, it’s you, Phil. And let’s face it, you could get a rattlesnake to trust you.”

“Unfortunately for us,” Phil told her, “neither Barton nor Romanoff are venomous snakes.” 

Maria’s laughter echoed as she walked out the door, leaving Phil alone with Director Fury and a desperate need for something to drink that had an actual proof. Fury looked up from his screen as the door shut.

“Nick,” Phil said before he could talk himself out of it (and probably into attempting to hack the SHIELD central servers to delete a few hours worth of data), “are you serious about this?”

“Cheese,” Nick Fury said, “I just announced it to the liaison to the World Security Council. I can’t take it back now.”

“You might not feel that way in a minute.”

 

\----

 

“What the hell did I just watch?” Nick Fury asked several minutes later.

Phil fought down the urge to say he had no idea. Unfortunately, no other answer came to mind, and eventually he just shrugged, squirming in his seat. 

He hadn’t gotten to see the security footage; Nick had neither turned his monitor nor invited Phil behind the desk. He heard the argument as it played out, or at least the pieces that were loud enough for the microphone to capture, removing the bass from both their voices and leaving them flattened and unnaturally whiny. That didn’t mean he wasn’t still seeing Barton’s face-- it just meant he was doing it in his mind’s eye. 

As the argument replayed, the last dregs of his anger gurgled away. A cold lump grew in his belly and he felt his face draw down, as if he’d been awake for centuries instead of days. What the hell had he been thinking, letting Barton get to him like that? He knew the man was in a bad state-- injured, his entire life upended, his best friend in a different hospital bed. If Barton chose to take it out on him, maybe that meant he’d felt Phil was a safe target?

No-- that implied Barton wasn’t right to be angry at Phil. And the longer Phil had listened, had to hear over again the distaste, bordering on fear, in Barton’s voice when he’d asked how Phil thought it would  _ look _ , the way he’d treated Barton, the more Phil’s own righteousness crumbled. 

“Phil,” Nick said again, a little more gently this time. “I’m gonna need you to form words for me, here. What happened?”

“I lost control,” Phil said, deciding to stick with the obvious at first. “Inexcusably.”

“No shit,” Nick replied. “It’s been… years… since I saw you like that.” 

“You see why it might not be a good idea to put us on a team together. I-- I should have known better than to poke Barton when I was still frustrated. He was-- understandably-- in a very fragile state as well. But I don’t think… I don’t think this is something we’re going to be able to just forget, Nick. We both... ” Phil trailed off, gesturing back at the monitor helplessly.  _ We both came too close to the bone. _

“Hrmph,” Nick poked at the keyboard, clearly rewinding something. “I’m especially fond of that flounce you did at the end. Look at you, Phil. If Barton can get you that far out of your shell, forget taking you off the same team, I might make you roommates.”

“Don’t even joke, Nick.” 

“Cheese.” 

“Fuck,” Phil sighed, because if Nick was dragging that out of the dusty past, he wasn’t going to like whatever was coming.

“You brought this on yourself. Barton got some solid hits in.”

“He earned--” Phil started, and Fury glared.

“Yeah yeah I heard the tapes. But he’s got a fucking point about you being compromised.”

“I know,” Phil said, because denying it would just have made Fury think Phil thought he’d gone senile.

“Glad you do,” Fury replied. “Look, I’m concerned, I’ll give you that. But I don’t see anything there that’s worth all the trouble I’m gonna get if I tell Alexander I’m gonna have Victoria Hand work with the Black Widow and Barton instead, or otherwise change this thing around. That’s an order of fucking magnitude worse than working around a personal conflict of interest, or whatever it is.” Fury shifted, leaning away from his computer and folding his hands over his stomach as he looked at Phil. “In fact, only two things are really giving me heartburn right now.”

“Yeah? Which two?” And how? From where Phil was standing, the fight had been even more mortifying than he remembered.

“One,” Fury said, pulling up an index finger, “is whatever the fuck you two were whispering about, that made you look like Barton pissed in your cereal.”

“I didn’t look like that the entire conversation?” Phil asked, in spite of himself.

“This was particularly concentrated. Do you want me to repeat the conversation for you? He says ‘do you know what it could look like,’” Fury said it in a deadpan so flat he could have been reading the stock report. “ _ You _ tell him not to be absurd ‘we hardly talk to each other’ and  _ he _ says ‘don’t I know it,’ and then you lean in and start muttering at him. What was that?”

For one wild moment, Phil thought about laying it all out in front of Nick; that he and Barton had been lovers, that Barton hadn’t bothered to remember his  _ face _ , had taken years to figure out that he was being commanded in the field by the man who’d commanded him to come only a few years before that. 

Put that way, it was completely un-tempting. Anyway, it was  off the table; if there was one thing he and Barton  _ had _ agreed on, in that room, it was that Miami was just between them. No intruders allowed. Even if Barton hadn’t realized it until Arizon-- ah. 

“I may have accidentally reminded him about our last operation together, the one just before he went to California,” Phil said. “The evac. He was… injured. He… we… the conversation was personal in nature,” he sighed. “But he may regret… I’m sure he regrets… some of what he told me.”

“By personal, you mean he whined about his ex and you let him?” Nick asked, and Phil shrugged something that might look like assent. It had been part of the evening, sure. “Doesn’t seem like enough---”

“I told him I tried to kill myself,” Phil threw out, before he could talk himself out of it. “By way of… he… it made sense at the time.” 

It still  _ did _ . Barton could throw it back in Phil’s face if he wanted, but Phil’s biggest fear in Arizona had been that Barton would make the mistake he had made, without realizing it, and find himself in the same place-- in a similar place. Clint was stronger, less burdened, than Phil had been at the time. And Phil meant to keep it that way.

“And he’s mad at you for that?” Fury asked incredulously. 

“No! It-- it just got tangled up with everything else. With the talk about Bobbi Morse. I shouldn’t… I shouldn’t have put that on him, not in the state he was in. We haven’t had much of a  chance to talk about it.”

“So, what he-- oh,” Fury’s laugh was short. “Oh that’s what it was, just before your epic flounce. He thought you were calling him weak, huh, for the thing with Morse? Too messed up in the head to fix?”

Phil nodded.

“Didn’t occur to you to straighten him out on the subject?”

“I didn’t think--”  _ I could stand to be in the room any longer _ \-- “it would help.”

“Well, now you’ll get another chance to talk it out,” Nick said, as if it was the only logical choice.

“No!” Phil protested, before he could stop himself. “I don’t… there’s not… a lot for us to talk about. Really, Nick, it’s better if I can just… retreat.”

“Yeah about that,” Nick jabbed the recording off. “Barton’s got a point about you retreating. Cheese,” he warned, as Phil twisted his face up. “Don’t even try that bullshit on me, like I haven’t been telling you since the beginning it was stupid. You’ve treated him with kid gloves, you don’t get to play injured when he thinks you think he’s fragile.”

“I  _ don’t _ ,” Phil growled, because he couldn’t at Barton. “I think he’s…” he trailed off, because anything he could think of to end that sentence-- like  _ exquisite-- _ was going to be exactly the wrong thing.

“Phil,” Nick quieted him, “he wanted a fresh start, and you didn’t give it to him, but you let him think you did. You know that’s a bad idea. What’s more, I don’t get why you thought it was necessary in the first place. What the  _ fuck _ is between you guys? Because I’m starting to believe you really  _ did _ f--”

“He killed Ghulman Farouq,” Phil blurted out without thinking, and then blushed.

“He… what?” Nick asked, sitting up straight, clearly discombobulated. Well, at least it got him off the scent. Phil sighed and tried to collect himself.

Of the two secrets from Miami he could give up, he hoped Barton would forgive him it was this one, if he ever found out. Probably so; he had never denied his past as an assassin. And this one was a secret he didn’t even know he had.

“Ghulman Farouq, you remember,” Phil said, collapsing into the chair across from Fury and putting his head in his hands. “I told you, after-- after what happened in Afghanistan. It all started when he was killed.”

“And Barton killed him,” Nick said carefully. “You sure?”

_ Oh yes _ , Phil thought, he was sure. He’d been standing right next to Farouq when Chris did it, too. He’d seen the archer silhouetted against the setting sun, the moment after he shot.

“An arrow through the neck,” Phil replied, lifting his head far enough to stare at the carpet beneath Fury’s desk. “And through Rojas’, too. Who else d’you know who used a bow to assassinate people? And Barton was just starting with Archstone then.”

“Does Barton know  _ who _ he killed?” Fury asked, and Phil shook his head vehemently.

“He doesn’t. He didn’t know anything-- and I don’t want him to know, Nick,” Phil raised his eyes all the way. “That’s the point. A fresh start. How could he have one if he knew-- if every time he saw me, he looked… he saw…” 

“But he  _ wouldn’t _ see, Phil, because you didn’t tell him,” Nick said softly. “You could’ve talked to him like a normal person-- hell, you could’ve come right up and crawled under the covers with him and he’d never have seen.”

Phil ignored the implication of  _ under the covers _ , and fought for an answer.

“But that’s not it, is it, Cheese?” Nick asked. “You’d still know. Do you remember, when you look at him?”

“Yeah,” Phil sighed quietly.  _ Among other things _ . Among lots of other things. “Not as much… it’s been getting better.

“And so you haven’t told him...and you didn’t tell me.” Belatedly, Phil realized how calm Nick’s voice had become, how dangerous. “Didn’t think that needed to be in his dossier?”

“I didn’t want you to judge him for it,” Phil said. “He couldn’t know. He doesn’t deserve your resentment.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Nick snapped. “And you know that. Whose resentment were you protecting him from? Yours?”

Eyes squeezed shut, Phil let himself nod. For all the good that had done him, yes. Or at least, let Fury think Phil resented Barton. It was easier than the truth, easier than admitting that the problem was that Phil didn’t resent him and didn’t ever  _ want _ to resent him.

“Well,” Nick sighed, “now he resents  _ you _ , for dancing around him like a complete asshole.” There was way too much relish in his voice. “So I’m thinking you got what you deserved. But Phil, what do you want me to do? I can’t remove you from this. Do you want me to remove him? Bust him back down to probie after all?”

“Don’t you dare!” Phil snapped, then blinked back. 

“What, because he’d win your little argument then?” Nick pointed at the now-quiet monitor. “Phil, grow up. Naw, I’m not gonna do it because he’d be wasted, and you know it. I want him right under my thumb. But I don’t have time for your self-sacrificing guilt. He’s not the one who just flat-out ignored the conflict of interest regs here, you are. Never mind Barton, I could bust you back down to probie for this.”

“Maybe you should,” Phil said bitterly. At least that way he wouldn’t have to work with Barton.

“Oh no, you’re not getting off that easy. I can’t afford for you and him to sabotage this project. You two’re gonna have to learn to get over yourselves.”

“How the hell do you suggest we do that?”

“Well,” Nick said, “you could start by telling him about Abdul-Rauf. Stop coddling him, Phil. Seems like the kind of thing a man like him would want to know about.”

“No, it isn’t,” Phil whispered. “Trust me.” He could have lived all his life without those memories. How could he pass them on?

“Okay, maybe not want. But need, Phil. Deserve.” The creak of Nick rising made Phil look up. Nick was crossing the room, and he came to crouch right at Phil’s feet, poking him in the knee. “Come on, Coulson. You’re not a coward. Just tell him.”

Phil nodded, against his will. He knew perfectly well that he never would; the last thing he wanted to do was tell Clint what a mess he’d left behind.

They would just have to find a way to work together without Phil ever having to confess. After all, they’d been managing all this time, hadn’t they? It would be fine, once they’d both had time to bury the past again. And so would this business of working with the Black Widow, who’d betrayed Barton and left him to be captured or killed. 

Yes. It was all going to go  _ so well _ . Phil could tell already. It was going to be a fucking peach of a disaster. And he was going to walk into it with eyes wide open.

 

\----

 

Natasha caught Clint just as he was leaving Agent Sitwell’s room. His head was down as he came out, and for a long moment she just stood there watching, thinking he didn’t see her. He looked older, less vulnerable, in his black SHIELD t-shirt and fatigues than he had looked half-falling out of his hospital gown. It emphasized the new breadth to his shoulders, even with his hands shoved into his pockets and everything slumped in dejection. 

“Now is not a good time, Natasha,” he said, and looked up. 

He wasn’t wrong; now was definitely  _ not _ a good time. Not when he looked like walking into a wall and putting himself through it face-first would probably make him feel better.

She tried and discarded  _ they say he will be well _ and  _ how is he doing _ and  _ I’m sorry _ as all leading to wounded sarcasm on his part and needless aggravation on hers, and eventually turned back to glance in the window.

“Director Fury told me he was your supervising officer,” she said.

Clint stared at her for a moment before turning back with her to look. Sitwell was lying as still as if he hadn’t moved since Agent May had been there-- an improbability; surely the nurses moved him as they attended him? Did his skin look a little less sallow? She couldn’t be sure. At any rate, he had, she’d been told, jumped off a rooftop after Clint, thrown himself into the fight simply because Clint had, gotten himself injured protecting both of them-- protecting Clint-- because  _ she _ had been in trouble.

She supposed she ought to feel guilty.

Eventually she might even do so. At the moment, curiosity came closer to the mark.

“He recruited me,” Clint said shortly. “Shot me-- accidentally, he swears-- in Rotterdam. Dragged me here, put up with me, got me trained,” he swallowed hard. “Brought me hamburgers in medical.”

Natasha looked at the tray beside the man’s bed-- no hamburgers. 

“Yeah I’ve been called a sentimental fool before,” Clint rasped, and Natasha didn’t need to ask  _ by whom _ since she recognized herself when she was accused, “but I’m not stupid enough to bring an unconscious man a cheeseburger.”

“Ah,” Natasha replied, then blinked. There was something different about the room and the man after all-- someone had placed earbuds in his ears, and the wires tumbled down to a battered Discman tucked into the lax curve of his thumb and forefinger. “No, not cheeseburgers.”

Clint shrugged again.

“Man likes his Lady Gaga, okay?” He turned away from the room and picked up a duffel bag next to the floor. “Why are you here, Natasha?”

Natasha looked back at Sitwell, lying still in his bed, and sighed. She could learn about him later; he could impact her little at the moment.

“I wanted to ask you about Agent Phillip Coulson,” she said.

“What?” Clint fumbled the bag. “Wh-- why? What about him?”

Up until that moment, Natasha’s only impression of Agent Coulson had been  _ watched me while I was sleeping _ combined with  _ knows too much about my past _ . Now, she rapidly added  _ has Clint Barton tied in knots _ to her list. It did not give her comfort.

“Director Fury says I’ll be working with him now. He… oversaw the Red Room research SHIELD did just after you brought me in. I would… I want to know what kind of man he is.”

Clint was stock still, staring off into the middle distance, for so long Natasha thought she might have to reboot him. Then he shook his head.

“You’re asking the wrong guy, Natasha. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home.” 

Before she could stop him, he stalked past her, duffel swinging as he slammed through the fire doors that separated the wing from the rest of SHIELD medical. Natasha shrugged and walked after him. 

She caught up to him in the second floor atrium, a wide sunny space that ended in a balcony overlooking the ground floor. Clint was standing in the middle of it with his bag at his feet and a disgusted look on his face.

“Clint?” she asked him. “You were going home?”

“I forgot,” he said. “Bobbi and I moved to California. I don’t live here anymore.”

“Okay,” Natasha said carefully, feeling a great deal of what she thought she’d known about Clint’s place in SHIELD falling down around her feet. “So when do you leave?”

“No I… don’t live there, either,” Clint said, squeezing his eyes shut. 

Somehow, that was the final straw for Natasha, the last proof she needed that this was not her Clint, would never be her Clint again. Life had reordered itself around him in patterns she didn’t have the key to decrypt. He moved through the world differently now than the vibrant, vulnerable assassin she’d dragged along after her.

“I suppose I’m headed for agent services then,” he said, clearly resigned to his fate. 

Agent services-- where Fury had sent her to be assigned quarters in SHIELD’s residential annex, since even if she’d wanted an apartment outside it, no one trusted her that far. Wonderful. Just what she needed-- to bump into this stranger she used to live with in this place he knew and she didn’t. To see him wandering out of a common room in his sleep pants, familiar like the ballerinas her memory insisted she’d once danced with but the Red Room records suggested she had not. Yes, that was really going to help her continued battle against her own brain.

“I suppose you are,” she said, and fell into line next to him.

She’d been dubious enough about Fury’s decision when he’d told her. Barton didn’t want to be around her, didn’t trust her; Coulson she didn’t know (and he knew too much about her, she didn’t add). Fury’d given her a long look and told her that he’d have had a hard time finding two agents who were going to understand what she was dealing with better than they would, and he hadn’t thought she’d signed on looking for  _ comfort _ .

He had her there.

He also, she knew, likely had several levels of auxiliary considerations, and wondered if he considered Clint the most likely person to take her out early if she became a threat, or the canary in the coal mine-- the first person to succumb to her wiles if she tried to use them. (She wondered which of them Clint considered himself.) She had worked with worse.

What she had not expected was for Coulson, also, to present a problem. From Fury, she’d gotten the sense that Coulson was a man who liked being behind the curtains, who prefered to let his results speak for him. She’d gone to Clint looking for the perspective of a man who’d served under him-- this skittishness was utterly unexpected, and worrying. What in the world had Coulson done to him-- and did Fury know?

“If you stay here, it will make one thing easier anyway,” she mused as they walked.

“What’s that?” he asked, mind clearly already on the provision of shelter for the night.

“For Coulson to find us both when he wants us.”

“Coulson isn’t gonna want me-- he isn’t going to be interested in finding me, Natasha,” Clint growled, and Natasha stopped short again.

“How not?” she asked. “Director Fury’s decided to put us all on a team together.”

Slowly, ponderously slowly, Clint turned. The look on his face was as betrayed as she’d ever seen it-- and that was saying a lot.

“You have  _ got _ to be kidding me,” he said.

This, Natasha thought, was quite likely to turn into a disaster. And she was going to walk into it with her eyes wide open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: new beginnings, way too fast


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone tries to settle into new roles. Some of them do better than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings this chapter.

Natasha knew, in a distant kind of way, that her arms were aching. She was not worried. No matter how unreliable her mind might become, her body would not betray her. She could stay like this, arced backwards, head down and navel up, indefinitely.

Steady as a rock.

There’d been times in the past few weeks that this had been her only solace. She had, somewhat reluctantly, gone to Director Fury’s brainwashing-- pardon, brain _un-_ washing-- experts. (Clint, she felt sure, would have called them brain dirtiers. Likely she would have found them less disconcerting if any of them had seemed to have his sense of humor.)

Her instincts screamed at her each time to stop, to hide the cracks in her psyche-- but her instincts had to an extent been implanted by the Red Room, and were not to be trusted. So she kept going, and allowed herself to be poked and prodded and catalogued with as much simulated grace as she could muster.

And on the days when they had spent too long taking her through her paces, poking into her dark corners and asking her if she was really, truly certain that she’d once danced at the Bolshoi, she could at least count on the truth of her toes as she did a releve in a private corner of the gymnasium.

Equally unsettling, Natasha decided as she kicked over into a handstand and began to bend her knees, were her mandatory therapy sessions. Half the time she fed the therapist tale after tale, true enough but false in implication, and got nothing but non-committal little grunts. The other half the time, Natasha lapsed into a kind of overwhelmed silence, and the woman worked away quietly and pretended not to take any notice of her.

What good this was supposed to do her, or SHIELD, Natasha didn’t know. Passing the usual range of psychological tests was one of the first things the Red Room taught, practically as easy as breathing. That would not have been in the spirit of her bargain with Director Fury, however, any more than avoiding the brain dirtiers would have been. She just… wasn’t sure how to _not_ do it. The sourness seemed, at least, like a compromise.

Of all the ordeals she was enduring, the debriefs with Director Fury, while an exercise in horror, were at least candid. Not that _he_ was horrible-- he continued as he’d begun, comfortingly dry and matter of fact. It was all her, terrifying herself, as she gave him mission after mission, adding up the bodies and finding far more red in her ledger than she’d remembered creating-- as if the blood itself compounded over time. On occasion, Natasha had begun slinking into Doctor Heilman’s office after these debriefs, to sit and listen to the scratch of her pen against paper. She thought this pleased the doctor, but it couldn’t be what they’d intended her to do with therapy. Surely it wouldn’t please Director Fury-- or Agent Coulson, who more than likely knew every move she made.

Natasha’s elbows trembled as she dropped her toes down to tickle the back of her head-- no-- as she remembered the first time she met Coulson (properly and with her eyes open, at any rate). The mild, almost apologetic little smile, the firm generic handshake, the way he squared the file before pushing it across the table to her.

“My file?” she asked, even though she knew it wasn’t. It was large in the wrong way, stuffed with outsized papers, stamped and taped.

“That,” he’d said, “depends on you, I think. It’s everything I’ve managed to collect on the Red Room.”

“Director Fury’s taken me through the briefing, everything you’ve found after I… after you brought me in,” she’d said, “and what he hasn’t, your Doctor Rosen has explained. The mind control the Red Room used.”

"Oh, this is older than that,” Coulson told her, his voice kind. “It’s everything I tracked down in the vaults, after we knew what we were looking for. It’s fascinating-- some of it goes back to the beginning of the Cold War, before SHIELD. Director Carter herself built some of those files.” He’d flipped through, opening to a page with a typewritten brief, redacted far more lightly than she’d have expected. “That’s Dottie Underwood,” Coulson had said, “or at any rate she called herself that. I suspect she was one of the first Widows. Director Carter found the facility where she’d been… trained. As a child.”

Natasha’s fingers had stopped, hovering millimeters over the woman’s serene, perhaps smug, face. She willed herself not to skim the briefing.

“I thought it might help,” Coulson continued, “to have an outside perspective. To…” he broke off, shrugging. “I thought it might help,” he’d repeated. “Anyway, it seemed wrong to keep it from you.”

Natasha’d stared down at the file a long time after he’d left, flipping half-seeing through the pages, the reports, the pictures, and tried not to let herself think about what it meant that Coulson had read them all. That he suspected that little Natalia Alienovna had been cuffed to the same bedposts as, perhaps, the woman who stared up at her from yellowing pages. That she was the product of a proud tradition, over half a century old, of broken little girls.

He’d never varied from that first polite, nearly apologetic, demeanor, as he took her at high speed through various SHIELD protocol trainings, his voice a blur, till she finally realized he was racing not just because he thought she was a quick study, but to get himself out of her sight. He trusted her enough to give her files touched by Peggy Carter herself, but he didn’t want to be near her. Natasha tried not to tie this bacIk to Clint, but what other source coul--

And then her elbow gave way under the force of a blow, and Natasha crashed inelegantly to the floor, barely managing to roll out of the way of the attack that followed.

“You were supposed to be clearing your mind,” Agent May said, her even tone at odds with the ice in her gaze. “Not wallowing.” She aimed a kick at Natasha’s knees, nearly connecting before Natasha could get out of range and get her guard up.

“I wasn’t wallowing,” Natasha intended to say. Somehow, it came out "I never had to do this before.”

“Evidently.” May’s next jab was at Natasha’s shoulders, more easily deflected.

“Well if my former handlers wanted my mind clear, they just did it for me,” Natasha growled, feeling the truth of it bitter on her tongue, aiming a strike at May as she did. May deflected, pulling back to circle her, then snorted in a clear dismissal of all Natasha’s internal turmoil.

On the balance, Natasha agreed with her. She pushed the past, and this complicated SHIELD present, out of her mind and prepared herself to spar. _This,_ at least, was familiar territory.

As they circled each other, Natasha thought she caught a glimpse of someone lurking in the galleries above the training floor, arms curved over the rail. No-- not someone. Clint. He wasn’t so changed that she didn’t recognize him watching her from a high place. Why the hell was he here now, when he’d assiduously avoided her for the last two weeks? What could he possibly--

“Eep!” Natasha squeaked, and ducked a high kick.

There’d be time to think about Hawkeye later-- he wasn’t going anywhere. Meanwhile, nothing good came of failing to pay the proper attention to Melinda May; she took it personally.

Afterwards, May slumped down on the bench. Natasha slumped next to her, trying to control her own heavy breathing by matching it to May’s. They passed a water bottle between them and panted. Her mind finally felt clear and settled, and the silence between the two of them was easy enough that she knew she’d satisfied May as well as herself.

Sparring with May was by far the most difficult thing she’d done since arriving at SHIELD, but so very, very satisfying. Perhaps she’d been right when she first talked to Fury-- so long as her body was still responding to her command, she would be all right. Her mind, if not clear, was clear _enough_. The only pieces of the Red Room left, in this moment, were what she allowed house room.

What was not clear was what had been left of her, now that she’d swept them all out.

\----

“So Pao gets the 084 in Myanmar-- if he can get in-- and the Winnipeg op. Anything else?” Phil kept typing, one-handed, as he grabbed the relevant files with his other hand and placed them on the chair next to him. “Burundi?”

“That’s far afield even for Chee. I’ll assign Burundi locally. It’s only a Level 5, and I want an excuse to watch the regional office for a while.” Fury pulled the Burundi file and set it next to his chair, then stretched. “That about it, Phil?”

Phil looked over the piles stacked on the desktop, nearby chairs, the credenza, and listing against his feet on the floor. All his ongoing assignments, being shuffled off. There weren’t as many of them as the files made it seem there were, but somehow the other little associated tasks had bred while he hadn’t been paying attention. More and more frequently, he’d been shunting them off to the agents who worked with him-- and they’d been, quietly, handling them with exceptional skill.

Fury had been right, Phil realized, when he’d accused Agent Coulson of building a fiefdom. His own little Kingdom of the Weird, kept together and ruled not by any right of seniority or command, just whatever favors he could finagle from the divisions. He eyed the piles with poorly-concealed regret.

“Don’t gimme that, Cheese,” Fury sighed at him. “Your people are _good_. They’re more than good, you’ve gone and hijacked a fair number of our best and brightest. They’ll do you proud, you just have to let them.”

“Their superiors will just take them back, now that I’m not there,” Phil grumped, knowing it was slightly unfair. Anyone who’d worked with him long enough knew how to get what they wanted from their chain of command, after all.

“Am I or am I not the Director of this agency, Agent Coulson?” Fury snapped. “It’s time to decentralize. I’m assigning them all to the Weird Stuff division full time, now, okay? Your chicks are gonna fly just fine.”

“You’re actually calling it the Weird Stuff division?” Phil asked, feeling a smile break through despite his will. Fury snorted, and grinned at him.

“Unless I think of a better name. Names, maybe.” He frowned. “There’s a lot here. More than any one man without any agents of his own should have to handle. I’m shocked you didn’t break before this, Phil. My own damn fault for letting it go this far.”

Phil suddenly found the files in front of him fascinating, and carefully tucked a few loose edges back into the manila covers.

“Not your fault,” he said quietly. “Feels like I’m on borrowed time, sometimes-- got to keep running if I want to get everything done before…” he trailed off, shrugging. Before it catches up, he’d have ended it. But what _it_ was, he’d never been sure. “I just--” he gestured at all the files. “Maybe there’s a little ego, involved. Giving all this up, on a short leash like a… never mind. I know it’s only fair.”

Fury frowned, watching him closely with that single-eyed stare, and he finally sighed. It was a dark, heavy sort of exhalation, and Phil fought the urge to take back whatever he’d apparently burdened Nick with. If he’d wanted to do that, after all, he could have started by _not_ having a breakdown in the middle of a live op.

“Phil, when you came on board you said you just wanted to clean up messes for me.”

“No,” Phil said, smiling a little at the memory. “I said I just wanted to keep the knives from your back.” At the time, he’d had so little to cling to, practically no ego at all. Nick scooping him up and bringing him into the fold had probably saved his life, and he’d been pathetically grateful. He’d have done anything Nick asked, if it’d give him enough meaning to keep going for one more day-- one more minute.

Even now, he realized, he’d still do that for Nick.

Well, within reason. He wasn’t going to go out and, for instance, overthrow a small country so Nick could have a place to stand. But Nick wouldn’t _ask_ him to. And if Nick did, he’d expect Phil to stop him. That was the deal.

“I don’t need you to catch the knives, I’ve got kevlar for that, Phil. I’m not just doing this to give you a rest; if I wanted to do that I’d just force you to take a vacation or find an 084 in Bora Bora for you. And it’s not a fucking punishment even if you keep making that face-- yes, that one, and it’s gonna freeze that way if you’re not careful-- when we bring it up. This is as high risk, high reward as it gets right now.”

“I understand that rehabilitating the Black Widow is,” Phil said carefully. “But Barton?”

It wasn’t that Phil disagreed. Clint Barton was very, _very_ , high risk-- for him. And very high reward for SHIELD. But he hadn’t talked to Barton since he’d stalked out of the man’s hospital room. Even if he’d wanted to, Barton had barely crossed his line of vision in the last two weeks, and he’d been moving at high speed, desperate to leave Phil behind again. He didn’t even know where Barton was staying-- maybe he was sleeping in a utility closet. Phil could have called, he supposed. Set up a meeting. Except he wasn’t supposed to be Barton’s CO any longer, and that’d probably set the wrong tone. Anyway, then he’d have to _face_ Barton, and if he did that, he’d have to apologize.

In practice, they’d have to talk again eventually. On missions, if nothing else. But no one expects you to apologize for… for… well, for breaking down in someone else’s hospital room, for starters… while you’re on live ops.

“Yes, Barton,” Fury sighed, pushing his chair away from the desk, so that he could settle into his favorite Phil-baiting pose, feet up on his desk. “For a man who spent so much time trying to give Barton special treatment, Phil, I’m beginning to wonder if you’re blind to his finer qualities.”

It was with a sheer effort of will that Phil refrained from replying that he had been very closely acquainted with Clint’s finer qualities.

“I’m not blind-- that is, I’m not sure what you’re-- I know he’s a… a… remarkable asset, Nick, but--” Phil clicked his teeth shut, deciding he’d mortified himself sufficiently already. Fury snorted.

“I trust I made my point, Cheese,” he said, which was entirely unfair. Reducing Phil to stammering incoherence probably would’ve been a considerable asset to some organizations, but he’d hoped SHIELD wasn’t one of them. And he’d never wanted Clint to be his enemy.

“As I recall, you’re the one who had to be talked into giving him an offer at all, so you don’t have a lot of room to talk,” Phil huffed out, trying to gather himself up.

“I was-- my mistake. Like I told him, I should have paid closer attention at the time. Been making up for that now; taking the poor guy back through debrief the way I would’ve done it at the time.”

“I bet he’s enjoying that,” Phil griped, thinking back to their argument, and Fury laughed.

“He seems to feel better when people take his concerns-- and him-- seriously. Who doesn’t? Especially once I told him it’s what I’m doing with Romanoff too-- all the way back to the beginning, far as he’ll take me. So far that’s Miami.”

“Miami,” Phil repeated, feeling the blood freeze in his veins.

“Miami,” Fury said, eyeing him closely. “Since you weren’t gonna tell me about it.”

 _Farouq_ , Phil thought, _he means Farouq. Not--Clint--Barton-- wouldn’t have told him about-- not after--_ but if he was seriously still scared about being kicked out of SHIELD, who knew what Clint might have told Fury? Phil squinted, trying to decide whether Fury was trying to get him to confirm that he and a barely-legal Barton had once had an… an assignation… before--

Phil stopped trying to hold it together, and scrubbed his face with his hands. Even in the privacy of his own mind he couldn’t make _assignation_ come out without a strong emphasis on the “ass.” Between that and Farouq, it was frankly amazing he and Barton hadn’t come to this pass long ago. If Fury was trying to push him to settle things with Barton before they got back into the field, this wasn’t helping. It was only confirming that he was going to end up a liability to Barton one of these days. And maybe Romanoff too, if this distracted him from her needs.

“I wish you’d consider someone besides me,” Phil sighed.

“Who?” Fury asked him. “Victoria Hand? Felix Blake? John Garrett--”

“Be serious,” Phil snapped, interrupting him. “Unless you want to see how long a Level Seven can last against a Black Widow. But Victoria or Felix… if you’re looking for a senior agent to lead Romanoff and Barton….”

“If I was looking for someone to supervise, I might take them,” Fury said. “But I’m not, because I don’t actually want to see how long a Level Seven can last against either a Black Widow or your pet archer. I’m looking for someone to stand up with them. You think either Hand or Blake-- or any of my other Level Sevens-- will do that?”

No, on the whole, Phil did not think so. It wasn’t that he didn’t try to picture it, it wasn’t that he _hadn’t_ tried to picture it, but every time he did, he saw the way Natasha Romanov’s fingers had trembled over the SSR files he’d given her. Or he thought of Clint, half delirious in the Sonoran desert and demanding Phil’s gun-- which he’d used to kill the beast leaping at Jasper’s back. There was no one at his level he’d trust, but--

“Doesn’t have to be a Seven, does it, Nick? They’re going to be Sixes, doesn’t it make more sense to pull in another Six?”

“Again, Phil, _who_ ?” Nick asked him. “Gotta be someone who can handle weird stuff. Gotta be someone _I_ won’t shoot, or who won’t wet themselves to work this close to me. And who I can spare from their other work. And someone who you brought on-- you know why as well as I do.”

Phil did-- even with all the changes he and Nick and Maria Hill had managed to make in their short tenure, SHIELD had the turning radius of an ocean liner. Barton was already a key part of Nick’s New SHIELD-- leaner, more agile, subtler and ferocious (and perhaps that was what Nick meant about Barton’s “finer qualities” after all). He clearly meant Romanoff to be an addition. The last thing the two of them needed was to get stuck with the old guard.

“Melinda is helping train Romanoff,” Phil pointed out. “And doing an excellent job.”

“Melinda May’s asked me to transfer her permanently to desk duty, Phil,” Nick told him, his voice going gentle. “I’m sorry.”

“God.” Phil squeezed his eyes shut against the wave of regret that rose in him. He’d been joking with Melinda right before she’d walked into that warehouse, just the normal patter they all used to cover the nerves. It’d gotten to feel routine, these walks they took into the middle of hell. What an expensive way for them both to learn a lesson.

“That’s not on you, Phil,” Nick continued, and Phil looked up to find Nick leaning so far forward over his desk his ass must have come off his chair. “It’s not.”

“I’ll… keep working on that,” Phil told him, swallowing. “That’s not-- is she going to keep training Romanoff?”

On the bulk of the evidence he’d come ‘round to believing that Nick had been right to assign Melinda to Romanoff. It was certainly helping settle her, in a way that he never could have managed himself and few other SHIELD agents could have replicated. At least-- any on site. Bobbi Morse might have, but both her location and, well, other reasons, made her an unsuitable choice.

“She is,” Nick said. “She asked specifically. Didn’t want Romanoff going out in the field unprepared, she said. My take? It’s good for her. May, I mean.”

“I-- okay,” Phil said, and forced himself to smile. “Well, she’ll kick the ass of all the other desk jockeys. But she’s not the only one. Jasper--”

“-- is still in recovery,” Nick interrupted him.

“But he and Barton are thick as thieves, and he helped save Romanoff’s life,” Phil countered.

“And you feel bad and think he deserves nice things,” Nick drawled. “And I don’t disagree with you. Which is why I’m not sure why you think _that_ is a good reason to team him up with those two right now. No, I’ve got a use for him here.” He pointed to the pile of files he’d pulled back to personally assign.

“You--” Phil looked from the files, to Nick. “You think Jasper’s ready?”

“You don’t?” Nick asked, clearly surprised. “Is Barton the only one you’ve been underestimating? This chick is more than fully-fledged, Phil.”

“No--” Phil started, then shook his head. “I mean yes-- that is, I agree. Jasper’s more than ready. I just wasn’t sure you--” he let that sentence trail off. Why the hell was he arguing this one, except to get his own ass out of the mess that Strike Team Delta was likely to turn into? And put that way, wasn’t that what he’d done to Jasper before? Exiled him because he was using him as a buffer between Phil and Barton?

Contrary to popular belief, Phil _did_ try to avoid making the same mistakes twice.

“Wasn’t sure I’d what? Agree? Phil, Jasper Sitwell handled the whole Budapest mess about the best of any of you. He’s more than ready to lead a team, as far as I’m concerned. What do you think, Clint?”

“Uh--” Barton paused, hand still on the door handle, and blinked, looking from Nick to Phil and back. “Yeah of course. He’d be, uh, aces… I mean… he’d be great. Was there a question?”

Nick waved him into the room. Barton dropped the handle a little reluctantly, Phil thought, and shuffled forward, keeping his gaze focused on Director Fury. So they were still doing _that_ , anyway. Great.

“Damnit, Clint, you’re making me twitch,” Fury said, “drop your ass in a chair and sit.”

“I don’t-- I didn’t-- you weren’t finished; I didn’t want to interrupt,” Barton said, side-eyeing Phil like he thought he might get his head bitten off.

Phil was pretty sure he hadn’t been _that_ off-putting. He’d even tried to say hello once as Barton was flying by, only have Barton turn that same damn big-eyed gaze on him, like Phil was planning on picking their argument back up where he’d left it. He didn’t really need that, in front of Fury.

“We’re fine,” Phil told him, fighting to keep his voice even, “we’re just finishing.”

Because god knew he didn’t need to be sitting next to Barton getting… getting _glanced at_ all the damn time. Whatever Nick had to say to _Clint_ (and when the hell had Nick gotten on a first-name basis with him?) he hadn’t seen fit to include Phil for the last two weeks. He could continue not to.

“Sit down, Phil,” Nick told him, the bastard, “I wanna talk over the ops going to Sitwell with both of you before I send the files to him.”

“Send the what?” Barton sat straight up in his chair. “Wait-- is Jas _awake_?” His voice cracked on the last word.

“Yeah,” Nick said, “for the last week.” He sent a sharp glance at Phil, who widened his eyes in what he hoped was an innocent manner. “I thought you’d been told. I’m sorry, Barton.”

“No I--” Barton stood so fast the chair fell backwards. He looked more lost than Phil had ever seen him, even in the shadows of the Rincon mountains, as he dragged himself back up from a PTSD-induced nightmare. “I didn’t know-- I’m… I… sorry, I need to--”

“Go,” Nick said gently, and Barton went. He slammed out the door so fast Phil barely registered he’d started to move.

“Cheese?” Nick asked, and Phil reluctantly turned his head back to Nick. “What the hell?”

“I don’t… I don’t know….” Phil said, blinking at him.

“You didn’t tell him?”

As that would have entailed _talking_ to Barton, and Nick knew damn well he hadn’t, he thought the question was unfair.

“I thought someone else had,” he said instead. “Everyone knows how….” Phil let the sentence trail off.

Everyone knows how close they are. That, however, had been before Barton had jumped off a roof and Jasper had jumped after him. Phil didn’t _think_ that would have been enough for Jasper to have Barton frozen out-- it wasn’t the first or even tenth time Jasper’d done something stupid in pursuit of his partner. But then, Phil’d spent so much time lately avoiding both Barton and the topic of him, that he supposed he wouldn’t know.

Somehow, over two years of only professional contact, Phil’d managed to nearly always know how Barton was, what he needed, where he was at any given moment.

And now he didn’t.

“Phil,” Nick sighed, and Phil closed his eyes.

“I’m not his commanding officer anymore,” he said, letting the bitterness seep out.

“True,” Nick agreed, “you’re gonna be his teammate. So you better start fucking acting like it. You don’t have a hell of a lot of time.”

Nick had probably given him more difficult orders in the past. Offhand, though, Phil couldn’t think of any.

\----

Clint came to a screeching halt in the middle of the medical wing housing Jasper Sitwell. The nurse on duty-- Tanya, he recognized dimly, of the ever-changing braids-- rose in alarm and he had to wave her down.

“Why didn’ you tell me he was up?” He panted, then winced-- wasn’t like he had any _rights_ in the situation after all. Tanya put down the taser she’d grabbed as he ran in and rounded the nurse’s station to straighten him up.

“Clint, hon,” she sighed, tugging his shirt straight and patting his hair down, “I thought someone did tell you-- people been in and out all hours. Shoulda known you wouldn’t just leave him on his own, but….” A shrug sufficed to finish that sentence.

 _But after what you did to him in Budapest, who knew?_ Clint knew perfectly well what everyone thought.

“Not your fault,” Clint told her, shaking it off. “Sorry-- I’m just a little shocked, still.”

“Mhm,” she said, then glanced down at the brown paper sack in his hand, already mottled with grease. “I see you came prepared. Go on in, Agent Barton. He’s awake and alert. Healing up just fine.”

“Thanks, Tanya,” Clint sighed.

He fished a packet of peanuts out of the bag for her, and as he turned to go into Jasper’s room her broad chuckle followed him. The fear that Jasper wouldn’t want to see him was rising fast, nearly choking him, and he covered to the distance to the room in two steps, trying to get inside before it brought him down.

So his situational awareness was maybe not the greatest as he flung himself into the room, already opening his mouth to apologize.

“Clint!” Cecelia said, rising from the chair next to Jasper’s bed, and Clint squeaked.

Cecelia looked just as… as _herself_ as she had the last time he’d seen her six months ago, before he and Jasper had flown out to New Mexico at the start of what would turn out to be the first of two majorly traumatizing ops. Still the same sharp dark gaze, the same perfectly-turned out outfit, polished and sharp even sitting in a cheap naugahyde chair and keeping the company of a guy stylishly clad in a flannel hospital gown. The only difference Clint could spot was that the highlights in her dark hair had gone from honey blonde to burgundy blush.

The sense of deja vu was dizzying.

“Hey, Cecelia,” he said, and swallowed before he could add _didn’t you dump Jas?_ It was why he and Jasper’d gotten the Budapest assignment in the first place, after all-- Coulson trying to do something to distract Jasper from his own moping.

Speaking of Jasper-- Clint finally focused in on him, fighting down the twist in his stomach as he did so. Jasper was mostly-sitting, the hospital bed raised up, and watching Clint intently. His head and beard were both unshaved, startlingly dark against his hospital-sallow skin, and beneath the flannel gown he’d clearly lost weight and tone.

Even weeks later, he looked like _shit_ \-- which was all Clint’s fault, really.

“I’m sorry, Jas,” he said, then cleared his throat when it came out in a rasp. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

Jasper smiled at him-- or grimaced, Clint wasn’t sure which.

“See, sweetheart,” Cecelia said, from behind Clint. She bustled over and straightened the covers over Jasper’s chest. “I told you Clint wouldn’t just ditch you like that, didn’t I? Clint, I’m sorry,” she turned to him, eyes wide and sincere. “I thought Agent Coulson was going to tell you-- I swear he said he would. I should’ve texted you, I was just so distracted, with all this. Can’t think of anything but Jasper.”

“Sorry,” Clint said again, helplessly. Coulson. Right. He’d have had to be willing to _talk_ to Clint first-- which, okay, maybe that was mostly Clint’s fault for not wanting to be talked _to_ , but then wasn’t it Coulson’s fault that Clint didn’t want to get yelled at again? Of  course, since it was Clint’s fault he’d been such a jackass about Natasha, he supposed the yelling was-- but on the other hand, Coulson’d been a jackass _first_ and--

Anyway. Coulson knew how to email. And text. And _write_ , if it came to that. He could’ve left a note in Clint’s SHIELD mailbox or something. Or asked Tanya to call.

“It’s all right,” Jasper said, and Clint spun back to him. “You’re here now. And--” he sniffed the air, “and double cheese with jalapenos and bacon?”

“You know it, man,” Clint said, setting the bag on the tray table next to Jasper’s bed. “Tradition, right?”

Jasper met his smile with an equally awkward one. Clint moved to sit, only to find that Cecelia had re-taken the chair at Jasper’s side, and was gazing brightly up at Clint. So he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets instead and affected nonchalance.

“So…” Clint said after a moment, “you’re awake, huh?”

“Yep,” Jasper said. He folded his hands over his belly.

“Great!” Clint said, then winced. He sounded like a goddamn camp counsellor, all chipper up top but hiding a deep well of desperation.

“Yep,” Jasper said again.

Cecelia beamed at them both, fondly.

“I, uh,” Clint rocked back on his heels. “I got you the big fries. Hope they haven’t gone limp.”

“Thanks,” Jasper said.

“Baby, have you had your meds yet?” Cecelia asked him, and Jasper glanced over at her.

“Don’t remember,” Jasper told her, softening a little. “Can you check with the nurse?”

“Sure thing,” Cecelia rose, kissing his forehead. “I’ll be right back. Clint dear, you keep him company for me, okay?”

Clint nodded and shuffled himself into the waiting chair, still faintly warm and wafting the fruity, kind of powdery perfume Cecelia always wore. The one that smelled like gardenias drowning in fruit punch.

Cecelia patted him on the shoulder and turned to go.

As she did, she grabbed the burger bag from the table.

“I’m sorry, Clint,” she said. “It’s _so_ thoughtful of you to bring these, but Jasper can’t have anything that heavy right now. Doctor’s orders. I’ll leave them with the nurse.”

“Damnit,” Jasper sighed as she left, watching the door with a longing look on his face. “I bet you got fried onions, too.”

It was the most human he’d been since Clint walked into the room.

“Always,” Clint told him. “You can count on me.”

Except, of course, on rooftops in Budapest.

Jasper, to his eternal credit, didn’t call Clint on that. He just emitted a kind of strangled little noise like a mouse horking up a balloon. Clint whipped his head around, alarmed, and heaved a deep breath when he realized Jasper’s distress was due to irony, not his head wound.

“Yeah I know,” Clint said, trying to make it come out light. “I fucked that one up. I fucked a _lot_ up. ”

Well, “light” had been a good plan while it lasted.

“Clint--” Jasper sighed, looking at Clint over the rims of his glasses, the way he used to do in the early days, just before he’d follow it up with _you dumbass_. Their professional relationship had been like that, just a little cracked, since Clint had nearly stomped all over it by accident in their first couple months. In retrospect, maybe he should have expected it to come to this.

“No, Jas, lemme just say I’m sorry before you yell, okay? I know it doesn’t un-break your head or anything but I really am. I’m sorry you got hurt and… and…” It wasn’t enough. Clint could tell by the look on Jas’s face that it wasn’t, and anyway his own gut was telling him that. He searched for words, opening both hands like he thought they could somehow help him.

Jas looked at him steadily, waiting, giving him time. He’d always known when to just let Clint struggle, let him find his own way out. (And then again, he’d also always known when to throw Clint a rope-- literally-- and when to get a shoulder under Clint and walk him through the flood.)

Clint looked up.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said. “Before. When it would have made a difference. You never pushed. To know. And… that was so fucking you, that was why I… that was why I trusted you and man, I shoulda told you about Tasha. About… about a lot of things, maybe.”

For a moment, Miami flashed neon bright in Clint’s memory: walking home with Phillip on streaky streets that first night, blood pooling under the bodies of the two men he’d shot the last. If he’d told Jas-- even in passing-- would it have changed anything? Would Jas have-- somehow-- figured out that Phillip and Coulson were the same? Would he have kept Clint from being an idiot?

Or would he have accidentally made an awkward situation exponentially worse, like he had in Budapest?

“Fuck,” Clint said again, “Really I just… I didn’t think you’d come after me.”

“You dumbass,” Jasper sighed, and it healed something in Clint’s heart to hear it, even though Jasper’s next words were flat and kind of resigned. “Of course I was gonna come for you. If you’d stopped to fucking think you’dve known that. I _always_ came for you, you jerk.”

“Yeah,” Clint admitted in a small voice, letting Jasper’s past tense be his answer. “You really did.”

“Look,” Jasper said after a moment, in which he must have read the crumpling of Clint’s heart in his face, “it’s over. It’s done. You said sorry. Don’t… don’t fucking dwell on it, okay? I could’ve asked about that girl of yours any time, once you weren’t on probation anymore. You didn’t… when it mattered, you trusted me and Coulson enough to ask, okay? That’s what counts.”

“Okay,” Clint said, biting on the words _Coulson doesn’t think so._

“It’s not that, all right. It’s just... the jumping thing?” Jasper continued, “Where you forget you’ve got fucking backup and think you have to do all this shit on your own?”

“Yeah?” Clint asked.

“It sucks, Clint. A lot.”

“I know,” Clint whispered. He wanted to reach out and give Jasper a punch on the arm, or shove a burger at him-- but Jasper was too weak for the one and he’d have to go wrestle the sack from Tanya before he could try the other. (And that was not a fight he thought he’d win.)

“Anyway,” Jasper continued, watching him, “You got what you wanted, huh?”

“I what?”

“The Widow. Coulson told me she came in. So… you got what you wanted…. Right?” Jasper trailed off and Clint let out a laugh that was closer to a sob than he wanted to admit to.

“I don’t even know what I wanted, Jas,” he said, leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes so he couldn’t see Jasper judge him. “I mean, I wanted Tasha not to die. I didn’t give a shit about her coming in. Now she’s here, it’s fucking awkward. Didn’t really think she’d agree-- I was just trying to give you guys a reason to say yes.”

“Well that’s typical,” Jasper sighed, and then the cup by his bed rattled and he slurped water from the bottom of a cup of mostly-ice. Clint cracked an eye open to find him glaring at the cup. “Can you think about that first next time, before you break me _and_ Coulson?”

“I--” Clint paused.

“I swear on my Mama’s grave, Clint,” Jasper said, leaning forward far enough that he could prop his elbows on his knees, so that he could look gravely up at Clint, “you get yourself into more fucking trouble this way. We’re your friends. You didn’t need to bribe us into helping.”

“I know,” Clint said miserably. “I know you would, Jas, but that didn’t mean… if you got in trouble because I was gonna be an idiot; if Coulson hadn’t asked Fury and I was _out_ ….”

“Oh come on, like Coulson wouldn’t do anything you asked for, Clint. Before you asked for it, if he could figure out how. You know he would.”

Clint felt the blood drain from his face. No, Clint hadn’t known-- but of course Jasper had. Hell, there was no way he couldn’t have missed how Coulson felt-- what Coulson was willing to give Clint. And all this time not only had Jasper not thought it was worth mentioning to Clint, he’d fucking aided and abetted Coulson.

Clint let that thought sink in, then began, cautiously:

“It’s… news to me, Jas. Apparently _only_ me.” At Jasper’s puzzled look, he elaborated. “That Coulson would’ve done… that he was my friend.”

“Come _on_ ,” Jasper frowned, his eyebrows bunching under the gold rims of his glasses. “It was fucking obvious. He was over the goddamn _moon_ when you got your Level Five-- you were in the room with us, how do you not remember this? He was _giddy_ , Clint. _Giddy._ ”

Clint didn’t think he remembered Coulson being giddy, though he’d maybe been a bit distracted staring at the laughter lines on the side of his eyes, trying to figure out where he’d seen them before.

“Yeah well, apparently I’m just that fucking blind,” he sighed. It was Arizona redux; how often could you say you “see better from a distance” as an excuse for being completely oblivious before it stopped being funny?

“You could say that again,” Jasper grumped-- and Clint actually started to, just to be a dick. Jasper’s fingers on his lips stopped him cold, mouth half open.

He looked down to stare at them, cross-eyed, while the silence stretched between them. And then-- miracle of miracles-- Jasper laughed. Not a lot, just a dry tattered husk of amusement, but it was enough. The tension snapped and Clint pulled his head back, shaking hard to clear it.

“So,” Jasper asked, “What’s been going on since I’ve been--” he waved his hand elaborately over his hospital blanket-draped body-- “indisposed.”

Clint spent a moment just letting his heart sit high in his chest, clogging his throat, before he swallowed and began.

“Well I nearly got kicked out of SHIELD for starters,” he said, leaning back. “No-- I _did_ get kicked out of SHIELD, I think, or maybe that was just Nick being dramatic--”

“Nick?” Jasper interrupted, sounding vaguely scandalized. Clint played it back in his head.

“Director Fury,” he said, starting up again. “Sorry; it’s been a long… uh… it’s been long. I’m probably a little fuller of shit than normal. Anyway, got kicked out, got re-recruited by Director Fury, who basically made me go through all the debriefing from the first time I came in _again_ \-- and lemme tell you, when he first made me the offer, I thought ‘starting over’ meant being a probie again.”

“Oh god,” Jasper scrunched down further into his pillows and grabbed his cup, clearly making himself comfortable for the long haul, “anything but that. Be a fucking disaster.”

“For SHIELD?” Clint asked.

“That too. How’s it feel, telling the story of your entire life to the Director?”

“I wouldn’t say my _whole_ life,” Clint said, “I left out a lot of the bits with you and me and that burger joint in Tiajuana.” Not to mention all but the barest details of his pre-mercenary days. Fury might know about the circus, but he didn’t have to know about Dusquene, or Barney, or Trickshot, that whole particular sordid mess of burglary and betrayal. Clint had decided he could keep his personal failings in that area to himself-- and Miami, of course.

Fury had wanted, and deserved, maybe, the details about Clint’s first assassinations. The details about what Clint’d done when he _wasn’t_ busy killing people, well-- if Fury wanted that, he could ask Coulson. Which he’d have to know to do first, and Coulson’d said he hadn’t told Fury about that.

That was still true, wasn’t it?

God, Clint hoped that was still true. He didn’t think he could face having to explain what it was about Phillip-- shoulders, smolder, compassion, smile-- that’d had him throwing away all his baby professional ethics to shack up with the guy while plotting someone else’s death.

“I keep telling you we should’ve had the tacos” Jasper said, and Clint responded with a by-now-automatic

“It was your idea, jackass,” before fully reseating himself in the ongoing conversation. Jasper snorted at him, clearly having noticed Clint had wandered off mentally for a moment.

“So-- what else?” Jasper asked, when they threatened to fall back into silence.

“Um,” Clint let his eyes drift away from Jasper and down to his knees as he considered how to frame the rest of it. “Been seeing Doc H again,” he started.

“I can tell; you’re using your words just like a big boy,” Jasper said. Clint nearly argued with him on that point-- if he was using his fucking words, why hadn’t he found any to use on Coulson yet?-- but the moment drifted on too long and the comeback got left in its wake.

“Yeah whatever,” he said instead. “So anyway, Fury put me’n Coulson and Natasha on the same team, or… like made us his personal guards or something. Not sure how it’s going to work yet; we’re supposed to start ops in a few weeks.”

And Clint still had _no_ idea how he and Coulson and Natasha were supposed to do that when none of them talked to each other. No-- not true, Coulson and Natasha talked sometimes. So, okay, so Clint didn’t know how it was supposed to work when neither of them would talk to him.

“You going to be okay with that?” Jasper asked him, and he’d finally warmed all the way back up, thank god. “Working with Romanoff?”

“Um,” Clint said, “Doc H and I are working on that one.”

Well, it wasn’t a lie. Exactly.

Jasper side-eyed him, and Clint ducked his head.

“You were pretty hot for her, before she sold you out,” he said.

“I was in love with her-- thought I was, anyway--” Clint corrected him. “Don’t think that survived finding out she set me up to take a fall for her. Well--” honesty made him stop there. “From what Fury said, sounds like she might not have been… she might’ve been under orders or something.”

Fury’d actually said considerably more than that, telling Clint that under the circumstances he thought it’d better serve all of them if he knew what Coulson had dug up about the Red Room, about the brainwashing and the false memories and the chaining kids to beds-- and how, sometime shortly after Hackensack, Natalia Romanova had gone rogue. How after that, the Red Room had stopped being an operating concern, piece by bloody piece. “Fuck knows,” Fury had said, “if I left it to you three to talk about, we’d be here till nuclear winter.”

Also, he didn’t say, the three of them might not have survived it. At least, Clint didn’t think he could have heard it from Natasha’s lips without puking-- or Coulson’s, for that matter. Didn’t need to hear _him_ tell Clint that even his most personal betrayal wasn’t personal to anyone but him.

Or that all that time, when he’d seen her as everything glamorous and deadly and gracious in the world, it’d all been a front. Natasha’d been just as fucked up as he was-- no, ten times worse.

“Yeah, sounds like it.” He told Jasper. “Which… fuck if I know how to deal with that, ya know? So,  I-- we’re working on it, Doc H and me. On… on things that happen in the past that can keep you all twisted up years later.”

And not only Natasha. Clint still hadn’t ever brought himself to explain about Phillip-- about him being Coulson-- to Doc H. Didn’t think he ever could. But he knew that was more than half the battle.

“Hard sometimes,” Jasper told him solemnly, “letting water go under the bridge without taking a piss in it.”

Clint gave a snort of amusement, almost against his will, and Jasper matched it.

“I _did_ try to visit,” Clint said, even though he knew that wasn’t-- quite-- what Jasper was referring to. Wasn’t the _first_ thing it referred to anyway. “You were still… you weren’t up for visitors yet, so I didn’t do burgers or anything. Left you a present, though-- did you get it?”

“I don’t know,” Jasper said, looking around vaguely, “there was so much… what did it look like?”

“It looked like my old Discman, because it was,” Clint told him. “Had the Lady Gaga you hadn’t got yet. Left it by your bed.” More like “left it in your ears” but it wasn’t like Jasper would remember that bit.

“Yeah, think I’d remember that,” Jasper said, then tossed his head on the pillow like he was shaking the problem out of his brain. “Maybe it’ll turn up. You want it back? I can have Cec look….”

“What? No. No it… it’s yours, man. I mean, if it turns up.”

Clint scanned the room quickly, trying to hide his frustration. It didn’t exactly look like a greenhouse but it had the usual assortment of flowers in various states of decay. He thought he spotted the remains of the bunch of grapes Isabelle Hartley left everyone just to remind them she wasn’t American, the Whitman’s sampler Felix Blake left everyone just to have something to snack on when he visited, a shit-ton of cards, carefully arranged on the windowsill-- Jasper didn’t usually stay in medical long enough to accumulate that many tributes. It choked him up a bit to know other people thought Jasper deserved all that as much as Clint did, even if it meant Clint’s own gesture’d gotten lost.

“It’s all right,” Jasper said, “it’s the thought that counts.”

Clint-- graciously, he thought-- didn’t tell him to go fuck himself.

“It’s all right, though,” he said instead, and reached into his jacket pocket. “I had time to make this while I--” _waited for you to wake up when you were already wondering where the fuck I was, apparently_ \-- “while you were-- anyway. Here.”

He shoved the CD into Jasper’s waiting hands, then tried to force himself to look away while Jasper read the back.

“The Ting Tings,” Jasper muttered, squinting at it (because Clint was a jerk and also bad at using PowerPoint and so he’d handwritten the back in his usual chicken scratch). “Flobots… Ladytron-- Clint?” he looked up, blinking. “You made me a mix tape?”

“Y…” Clint realized he was blushing, which was just pathetic. “Yeah…. Just. I knew you didn’t have time to keep up while we were in Budapest, and then you… uh… you know.” He gestured vaguely at Jasper’s head, then around the hospital room, for good measure. _Then you got a traumatic brain injury saving my sorry ass._

Jasper just sat looking at it for a while, turning the jewel case over in his hands, muttering the playlist. He was frowning at it, and Clint fought back the urge to ask him if it was too… something. Too over the line. Too stupid. Too much of the wrong music (no-- that Clint was pretty sure that was good. He’d ended up listening to enough of Jasper’s albums over the years, after all.)

Finally, Jasper turned and tucked it under a hardback mystery novel.

“I’ll have to play it when Cec’s not around,” he said, squaring the book until the CD was completely hidden. “She thinks my taste in music is weird.”

“Yeah,” Clint said, sighing at the ineffable mystery of their relationship, “I know.”

He left a few minutes later to let Jasper get some rest. He paused at the nurse’s desk, looking gravely at the grease-stained Five Guys bag, until his name, three times repeated, finally made him look up.

“Clint?” Tanya said, catching his eye. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, and wow he made a bad spy, if that was all the better he was at lying. He winced.

“Promise I haven’t touched it,” Tanya continued.

“Huh?” he said, cleverly.

“Okay,” she said, putting up her hands, “Ya got me. Maybe I snuck a fry. Or two. Just a tip for watching it, you know?” She ducked her head to meet his glance so he could see the joke in his eyes-- a clear invitation to share in her good humor.

“Yeah,” he said, “tell you what. Think I parked it there more than twenty minutes; maybe you better impound it.”

“You sure?” she asked dubiously.

“Yeah,” Clint said, and gave the bag one last poke. “I’m gonna head to the caf. My stomach just… isn’t up to it. Today.”

As he left the ward, the sound of Tanya munching followed him.

\----

The cafeteria had not been Natasha’s favorite new experience ever. It remained that way, weeks later. This in itself was a little startling to her.

After all, SHIELD’s cafeteria was fairly benign, as these things went. All steel and bulletproof glass like the rest of the complex; not too many places for ambush. More relevant than the sightlines, or so she’d been told, was the food, and it was… food? The normal assortment of salad bars, pizza heaters, a grill usually manned by two frazzled staff (from whom she had not yet had the courage to order), a truly astounding assortment of coffee, from the stainless steel percolators to the automatic cappuccino dispensers. Daily specials were indifferently updated on a chalkboard draped in fake greenery and plastic onions, and the menu was listed on stationary with the background of soft-focus radicchio.

She concentrated on these details to avoid acknowledging the real problem: the patrons. Whether their suits were field or tailored, neat as a pin or scientist-sloppy, all of them seemed to know why they were there and what they were doing. Natasha, for the first time in… well, a very long time, most likely... did not. The movements of the crowd were constantly catching her wrong-footed. She kept veering right when she should left-- or perhaps she was the one making them stumble, rather than the other way around.

That she was not yet comfortable at SHIELD was not, despite what the therapist thought, the problem. That the term “comfort” entered into the discussion at all was the issue. Life as a lone assassin in thrall to Perestroika-avoidant masters had not prepared her for _colleagues._

So Natasha tended to avoid the cafeteria. But not today, unfortunately. May had pulled her along after their showers, and Natasha had struggled in her wake right up until May had disappeared into the grill line, leaving Natasha stuck with a tray full of salad and no plausible reason to linger.

Hesitation would have been deadly. Natasha paid for her salad and headed for the safe harbor of a table in the far corner, mostly empty despite the rush. This was possibly because the far end of the table was anchored by a group of rather antsy-looking men and women in field suits, possibly straight from a pre-mission briefing, who were wolfing down food and amping themselves up by setting up a pre-flight playlist on someone’s iPod, blasting snippets of music from a little speaker. Which was fine; it kept away the riff-raff. They glanced over at her as she sat down, clearly recognizing her-- another thing Natasha was having a hard time getting used to-- then dismissing her.

Good.

She was halfway through her salad, discreetly slurping a sliver of red onion and wondering if May had just abandoned her to her fate, when a quick whisper, cut off with a laugh, caught her attention. It was her tablemates; a woman was hissing at her companions:

“... guys stop it, she’s gonna hear you…”

“Who cares?” said another, neatly cut off by “yeah, exactly” and “what’s she gonna do?”

Carefully, with infinite precision, Natasha set down her fork, and picked up her napkin. She tipped her head and met their eyes-- well, she tried to meet their eyes. As one, they blinked and looked down, all except the dark-headed white man playing DJ.

“Black Widow,” he drawled, looking her over carefully. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” It wasn’t snide. In fact, she thought it might actually have been a warning-- if a man as thoroughly mediocre-seeming as this one could pose a decent threat.

“Have you?” Natasha asked, keeping her voice neutral.

“Everyone has. Surprised they let you out at all,” said the blonde man to his left, bending around his friend. “They got a tracker on you somewhere? Bet they have.”

Natasha had assumed so as well, for the first week she was out of medical, but if SHIELD had tagged her they’d done it so discreetly she hadn’t found the entry point. She’d mentioned this to Coulson-- meaning it as a compliment-- and gotten a look of blank shock in return, before he’d told her in vehement tones that they’d have _asked_ first. SHIELD was a very strange place.

“How’re you enjoying SHIELD, anyway?” Asked one of the women. “Salad bar easy to poison? Where’s the caf figure on your targets of opportunity list?”

Natasha did not tell her that it was rapidly moving up the list, but it was a near-run thing. Instead she sighed and said:

“It was quiet enough until now. I preferred it that way.”

“Is that a _threat_?” the woman asked, not quite taken aback enough for Natasha’s taste. Yes, of course it was a threat, what in the world did the woman want, for Natasha to cut it out of the newspaper and glue it to stationery?

“Come on, bring it,” the dark-haired man said, “I’ve seen you spar with May. She wipes the floor with you.”

Natasha pursed her lips and considered her options.

Wiping the table with him would be messy, and she wasn’t entirely sure yet whether the proper display here was of power or of control. Which would Fury be looking for? Her peers? She’d just hitched an evil smile at the man when someone came up behind her.

“No you haven’t Rick, or you’d shut the fuck up now, before she proves you’re not half as good as Mel,” Clint said. His scowl at the other man-- Agent Esterhazy, apparently, according to the badge he revealed as he leaned away from Clint-- was sharp enough that even Natasha felt a sudden twinge.

“What the fuck, Clint, we were just--”

“Asking to have your asses handed to you,” Clint sighed. “Could we maybe fucking grow up here, or is your mental age stuck the same size as your dick?”

“Fuck it, Clint, what’s up your ass? C’mon, not like word didn’t get around.” Esterhazy was growing flustered, and his teammates were backing away, glaring at Natasha as if she were somehow the one to blame. Wonderful. “Everyone knows she’s the one who fucked off in Hackensack and left you surrounded by Rumlow’s team, I’m just trying to--”

“Harass an agent who reports to Fury directly?” Clint asked, because he hadn’t finished ruining her fragile reputation with the other agents thoroughly enough yet. “Yeah, great idea.”

“Look, man, it’s _your_ honor I’m trying to stand up for here,” Esterhazy said. This did put a different light on things; if this Esterhazy was one of Clint’s friends the situation became more delicate. Natasha waited. Clint threw up his hands.

“What honor? Rick, since when do I have any fucking-- look, all that is between her and me. She earned her spot here and she doesn’t need your shit, okay?”

“I don’t need your protection, either, Agent Barton,” Natasha said, keeping it even very deliberately. Clint spun and stared at her. “I am perfectly capable of handling… _this_ … myself.” She waved a careless hand at the field agents.

Clint appeared speechless. To be fair, so did the other agents, beyond one barely-there mocking “oooooooh,” from one of them.

In the otherwise oppressive silence, the iPod continued to burble unabated, a series of bap baps baaaas, an upbeat melody, and a man asking a _re you just a present waiting to be opened up and parceled out again?_

“Natasha,” Clint sighed, but how he was going to complete the sentence, Natasha never found out-- she suspected he didn’t know, either. Because Agent Coulson came striding up as Clint took a breath to continue, and Clint snapped his mouth shut and froze.

“Barton, Romanoff,” Coulson said without looking at either of them, “with me. Please.”

Clint appeared to have belatedly learned to keep his trap shut, because he just blinked. Coulson met his eyes once, then darted his own gaze away to throw an impatient eyebrow at Natasha.

“What do you need?” she asked, and Coulson shook his head.

“Not here-- I’ll tell you on the way.” He waited until she nodded, then looked over at Clint-- and yes, back away again, like Clint was too bright to linger on. After a moment, he turned on his heel and left. Clint bounced once, started to follow, stopped, turned to leave one last glare for Natasha’s attempted antagonists, and started walking away so suddenly he might have been launched.

Natasha got up to follow them with as much grace as she could muster, and picked up her tray.

 _Well you are a gardenia_ , the iPod sang, _pressed in the campaign journal of an Afrikaner candidate for mild reform._

The iPod, Natasha decided, was just being absurd now. Well, it could have the last word. She had absolutely nothing to say to that.

\----

“Agents,” Phil said when Romanoff had joined them, and watched both her head and Barton’s snap up, “we’ve got a mission.”

“We’ve got a what?” Barton asked, looking about as shocked as Phil had felt a half hour previously when Fury had stopped him at the door and called him back to look at a high priority email that had just come in.

Phil shook his head and gestured their way down the corridor, and Barton fell into step by his side. Romanoff came up on the other, and Phil felt faintly sorry for any agent that might happen to be coming the other direction in the hall; he didn’t think either of them were going to be willing to give way.

“I’m not cleared for the field,” Romanoff said.

“You are as of thirty minutes ago,” Phil told her.

“Am _I_ cleared for the field as of thirty minutes ago, too?” Barton asked, sounding bored-- which didn’t fool Phil for a minute. He knew without looking that Barton wasn’t pleased (and why would he be?) Romanoff looked past him, a little startled, although why, Phil wasn’t sure and didn’t have time to speculate.

“You are,” he said instead. “The Director wants wheels up in two hours at the latest. They’re preparing briefing packets now; we’ll have a half hour with him then an hour with ops support and analysis while they prep the quinjets. This is exploding fast.”

“An hour and a half of--” Barton stopped short, shaking his head, and bit his lip. Phil quickened the pace, feeling like he was running on top of moving water. If he could just keep them ahead of the objections-- the _we’re not ready, they’re not ready, this is the most Barton’s talked to me since Budapest, Romanoff has no reason to trust either of us_ \-- maybe they could advert absolute disaster.

“Why us?” Romanoff asked, and Phil couldn’t hold back his grimace.

“Because this involves a former associate of yours,” he told her. “Which gives us a distinct advantage over any other strike team.”

“I have a lot of former associates,” Romanoff said dubiously. “That’s not necessarily an advantage.”

Barton snorted, and she shot him another look, leaning across Phil to do so and nearly breaking his stride.

“Yes but this one is Edvin Bako, Farkas’s lieutenant,” Phil said, seeing Barton’s mouth start to open. Barton shut it with a snap, and Romanoff looked sharply at him. “I know it’s not the milk run the Director was planning on sending us on at first,” he continued, “but it’s exactly what our team was designed to deal with. High stakes, high freedom to act, and low visibility. Plus, frankly, a chance to clean up some of our own loose ends. We’re perfect for the mission.”

“Except for the fact that we’re not fucking ready for each other,” Barton grumbled.

They were only halfway to the elevators; not nearly far enough along for Phil to pretend he hadn’t heard it before they got into a public space and had to stop discussing the mission. He sighed.

“I know,” he said, “believe me, I’m well aware of y-- of the issues at hand. I did try to tell the Director.”

“I’m sure that went over well,” Romanoff murmured.

“Like a lead balloon,” Phil said. He glanced over at Barton, to find him staring resolutely at his own boots as they walked. “It’ll be… you’ll be fine. There’s no reason--”

“So you’re in charge of this op?” Barton asked, riding right over Phil’s attempt to placate them.

“No,” Phil snapped, stung. _Obviously_. He couldn’t even keep control of a simple conversation. “We’re starting off the way the Director wants Strike Team Delta to continue: no handlers, no COs; a team of… of equals.”

“Fury wants us to fucking _cooperate?_ ” Barton said, looking up at him at last, and making Phil wish he hadn’t. “Jesus. We _are_ screwed.”

Barton’s words echoed in Phil’s mind all through Fury’s briefing, which was delivered in his patented _don’t you even think about fucking this up, Agents_ clip, the briefing with ops, his brief trip to his office to collect his go bag, his trip to the armory, and all the way onto the quinjet. They rattled to the hum of the jet engines as the three of them sat, strapped into jump seats, facing each other but pointedly looking in opposite directions, the Black Widow humming something under her breath and Barton pointedly checking the fletching of his arrows.

Phil watched them not watch each other, watched them both dart dark glances at him, and closed his eyes. Barton was right; they were _so_ screwed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Strike Team Delta talks to everyone but each other


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The early days of Strike Team Delta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings this chapter

They made the last leg of the return flight in sullen silence, their final conversation-- if it could be called that-- still echoing in the quinjet’s hold.

Natasha had been humming as she slunk up the ramp, humming as she buckled herself into the jump seat with shaking hands, humming as she leaned back and closed her eyes. She couldn’t stop humming, even though she wished she could slide into blessed unconsciousness. IT was no use; the damn song was thoroughly stuck in her head.

More accurately, the chorus was still stuck in her head. She hadn’t heard enough of the rest of the song to even be able to hum the whole thing. And, to add insult to injury, it still didn’t make sense. 

She opened her eyes and glared inimically at the jet’s ceiling, counting aluminum ribs in an attempt to distract herself.

And-- no, no, she was still humming.  _ You are a gardenia, you are a gardenia, you are a garden-- _

Clint rolled his head upright, despite the pain it was probably causing him, long enough to spit out:

“ _ Please _ just shut up. You’ve been humming that same damn song for the entire fucking mission-- what’s your damage?”

_ I wish I knew _ , Natasha didn’t say, deciding she didn’t owe him an answer. She’d asked herself that question more than once over the course of the last two weeks, from wheels down to take off, in any idle moment (there hadn’t been many) and some not-so-idle moments (of which there’d been quite a few.) 

It had to mean something, if only she could just settle on what. She’d considered, and reluctantly discarded, more than one option: coded message, lost memory, conditioned trigger, subconscious warning, remnant of a past cover identity, mnemonic device  _ trapped in the campaign journal in the rucksack of an _ \--

Проклятье.

Coulson shifted and muttered from his corner:

“Maybe she just likes it, Barton. What the hell do you care?”

Maybe she just likes it.

Maybe she just liked it?

Natasha blinked.

Maybe she just….

_ Liked _ …

...it?

What was that supposed to mean?  She  _ just _ liked it? As if this happened to other people all the time, as if it was perfectly natural that there might be no external cause, no reason beyond… beyond…. 

Natasha realized she was beginning to scare Clint, the way she was frowning in confusion. She squeezed her eyes shut and tossed her head back.

Try as she might, she couldn’t get her head around this. That she could just… that without consulting the Red Room or SHIELD or a mission or an ulterior motive, it was possible to… that  _ she, Natasha, _ could, on her own, prefer....

That she, Natasha, on her own….

It sounded wrong, applied to her. It was a phrase for other people.

But then, the Red Room was gone at last from the Earth, and SHIELD was slowly helping her raze it from the back corners of her brain. 

And if Natasha didn’t want to move SHIELD into its place, she didn’t have to; Fury would never ask it of her.

If Natasha wanted, she could be one of those other people, who had likes and fears and loves and… perhaps she was getting ahead of herself.

Maybe she could start with liking things or not liking them, purely for their own sakes.

_ Maybe I just like it. _

She wanted to hear it out loud, but didn’t dare say it. 

The song was gone, at least, replaced by  _ maybe she just liked it, liked it, liked it, liked it, liked it  _ rattling around as the quinjet hit a patch of turbulence.

Natasha wished she could fall asleep, wished any of them could. 

She was so tired.

\----

The hangar was suspiciously full when the quinjet landed. Natasha thought blearily that Fury must have sent half of SHIELD to arrest them, although that seemed a little dramatic, even for him. It wasn’t like they planned on  _ going _ anywhere, after all, except perhaps straight to bed. 

Fury was waiting for them in the center of the hangar, arms crossed over his chest, casually radiating danger. There was an agent standing next to him who looked like he’d been scraped halfway back from death, his eyes bleak behind gold-rimmed glasses.

Oh-- Agent Sitwell. He looked different without the oxygen mask. Back on duty, or so pissed off at them that he’d dragged himself out of his hospital gown and into a suit? 

The two weeks they’d been gone were sufficient for him to be up and about, after all. At least he looked the better for those fourteen days; Strike Team Delta had only barely come out of them upright. Almost from their landing in Bucharest, their mission parameters had been obsolete. The mission itself had devolved quickly from “simple in-and-out” to “bus careening wildly off of a cliff and exploding at the bottom, one flaming wheel rolling away from the wreckage.” Sadly, that was not a metaphor.

Natasha paused to gather herself at the top of the ‘jet’s ramp, and felt more than saw Clint and Coulson do the same. Braced and ready-- and apparently not done enduring just yet. 

Coulson took a deep breath, and they all stepped off at once.

They were halfway down the ramp when Sitwell apparently could stand it no longer.

“What the  _ hell _ was that?” he yelped at them. It was, apparently, a question shared by Director Fury and half the occupants of the hangar. Natasha felt her face harden into porcelain. Clint stiffened on Coulson’s other side.

Coulson was less affected-- or even better at hiding his reactions than she’d imagined.

“That was a successful mission, Agent Sitwell,” he said, cool as anything, and kept walking. He did speed up just a little, and Natasha decided that maybe he was a little embarrassed at the attention after all.

Director Fury shuddered at Coulson’s words, his face darkening further-- and then he threw his head back and laughed. 

It rolled through the hangar and brought several more SHIELD techs out of hiding, looking even more scandalized than their brethren.

“Yes,” Fury said to Coulson, “it was. Congratulations, agents.” He waited until they all came even with him, Clint shouldering Sitwell lightly, before spinning on his heel and jerking his head. “Debrief time, and then you can go rest. Agent Sitwell, Agent May, and I will each take one of you.”

As he led them out of the hangar, Natasha could feel the eyes of the rest of the agents follow them.

“Are all SHIELD agents normally this indiscreet?” Natasha asked him in an undertone, “or did we do something shocking?” 

Fury chuckled, the sound rumbling up from his chest. Natasha took a moment to catalogue it for future reference. Contrary to appearances, genuine amusement came easily to the Director, but this laugh had a new, smug undertone.

“The second one,” he said. “And I don’t blame ‘em. Even I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Is that…” Natasha bit off the rest of the question. He seemed pleased anyway, and it was better not to ask whether it was good or bad yet. First, she wanted to decide if he thought she ought to already know the answer to her question: was Strike Team Delta exceptional-- or merely unprecedented?

\----

“What the hell were you guys thinking?” Jasper Sitwell asked. 

Despite the question, he was straight-faced and his hands were tented in front of him as he sat across the briefing table from Phil. If he’d been even a little less weary, Phil would have taken the time to appreciate properly just how calm Jasper looked and sounded. He’d developed an admirable poker face over the years. Whether that had been Phil’s influence or the product of working with Clint, Phil couldn’t be sure at this distance. As long as the result was this impressive, he supposed it didn’t really matter.

“Is that part of the debriefing protocol now? Have we been letting Blake write them again?” 

“Oh fuck you, sir,” Jasper said blandly.

Phil fought not to beam at him. Fury’d certainly been right; Jasper’s new Senior Agent pants fit him like they’d been tailor-made.

“Pretty sure that’s not on the list either,” Phil said, because proud or not, he was also exhausted and feeling like being an SOB. 

Strike Team Delta had not only taken out Farkas’s lieutenant, they’d used Bako to lead them straight to Farkas himself. Well, not so much  _ straight _ to Farkas as a little bit zig-zag, a lot catty-corner, and somewhat roundabout there at the end. But they’d  _ gotten _ him, and Phil knew he hadn’t been imagining the quiet satisfaction on Romanoff’s face. Hell, it made him feel good, too, to finally have that bit of the Budapest screw-up put to bed. Even Clint had mentioned it, though he’d done it pointedly enough that Phil knew the damage he’d done with their fight was still festering.

“The procedure leaves room for mission-specific questions, Agent Coulson,” Jasper continued, pulling Phil back from his unpleasant reverie. “I thought that one was pretty appropriate, given the circumstances.”

Phil frowned. He was fairly sure- that he and Barton and Romanoff had managed to appear professional over the comms. In fact, he’d been surprised just how normal they’d all sounded. Granted, it’d been deadly silent on the ride over, except for Romanoff’s nearly subvocal humming. Silent and excruciatingly awkward. But once they’d touched down, once all three of them had shifted into mission mode-- well, it would be an understatement to say he’d had no complaints.

Not that he’d ever have complaints about Barton’s work in the field. And the Black Widow had turned out to be everything they’d risked the integrity of SHIELD for and more: deadly, precise, adaptive, professional. A fine counterpoint to Barton’s inventiveness.

He told Jasper as much-- well, he left out the bit about Romanoff’s humming. And Barton’s reaction to it. And all of the parts in the middle of the mission when his heart had been alternately in his throat and the bottom of his stomach as he raced to keep up with them. But the professionalism-- he did mention that.

“Is that what you-- that’s all you have to--” Jasper stopped and looked at Phil like he was speaking Bantu. (Did Jasper know Bantu? He was pretty sure Jasper didn’t know Bantu-- yet.) “Do you know what it sounded like on the other end of the comms? Because I swear everyone in the ops room thought you guys were dead five times over on that mission.”

“You were in the ops room?” Phil asked, looking Jasper over. “Who let you back on duty that quickly?”

“Near the end, yeah,” Jasper sighed. “Fury had to put me back on duty early, because you three had given half the other agents nervous breakdowns. At least I’d worked with you and Clint long enough not to panic! But even for you guys that mission was off the wall.”

“It was not,” Phil said, nettled. “We were perfectly in control the entire time.”

“Are you kidding?” Jasper’s voice spiraled high, “I thought you were going to puke when Barton jumped those paramilitary assholes. I know I nearly did.”

“I had full faith in his abilities,” Phil told Jasper, looking significantly down at the paper until Jasper finally caved and wrote the comment down. 

He swallowed down the bile that rose up as he remembered the incident and Barton’s muttered “don’t worry I got this” over the comms just before he’d jumped off a low roof and right into the middle of a full dozen jackasses with semi-automatics. By the time Jasper looked up, he’d re-composed his face. It wasn’t Barton’s fault that Phil couldn’t handle his own emotions, after all.

“How about when the Black Widow took out that nun?” Jasper asked. “No worries there either, huh?”

“She prefers Agent Romanoff and of course not, she’s a very competent individual.” Phil paused for a moment, before honesty made him add: “And anyway, even I could see the nun had an adam’s apple.”

Any moment of doubt he’d had as Romanoff had yanked the nun’s habit off, well, it was private. Less about her than a product of his own failings. 

“Right,” Jasper said, and his fingers crept beneath the wire rims of his glasses to press against his eyelids. “Nothing to worry about. And I suppose the Director was overreacting when he nearly crawled over the comms line to strangle you right at the end there?”

“When was that?” Phil asked, trying to imagine it. 

“When was…. you’re kidding me. ‘Nonsense, Mr Farkas, I’m here on behalf of the Yakuza.’ Ring any bells?”

“It wasn’t meant to-- no one had to believe it, I was just the distraction,” Phil defended himself. It was startling how absurd it sounded, when Jasper put it like that. In context, it had made perfect sense, and neither Barton nor Romanoff had seemed at all startled. “Anyway, N-- Director Fury looked perfectly pleased this afternoon when we got back.” 

“He would,” Jasper muttered.

Phil snorted in sympathy. Nick took some getting used to, and this would have been Jasper’s first time working with--

“Wait,” he said, “Nick was in the Ops room?”

\----

“Of course I was in the ops room, Agent Barton,” Fury said, leaning back in his chair and glaring at Clint. “When I keep seeing personnel staggering out of a place looking pale, then running straight for the Tums in the vending machines, I take an interest.”

“Oops?” Clint said.  _ He’d _ started the mission with a sour stomach, and ended it with one too, but the parts in between hadn’t seemed that bad.

No, strike that,the parts in between had actually been fucking spectacular. Granted, he’d been worried every single second he’d let Coulson or Natasha down. But he  _ hadn’t _ , and they’d gotten their guy, and another one besides. And anyway,  _ fuck that _ , he would keep up with the big kids, or go down trying. If Fury wanted to give him a test, Clint wasn’t gonna back down.

And much as the thought of interacting with either of them socially might make Clint want to hurl, he had to admit that he knew how both his teammates worked in the field. He knew he could count on them both. Whatever game Natasha was playing, she wasn’t gonna let Clint drop this time, not if she wanted to stay at SHIELD. And, at least for now, she clearly wanted that. As for Coulson, he was so fucking dependable it made Clint sick.

And they’d  _ finished _ the goddamn mission, even though it’d gone far enough south they’d seen penguins, there in the middle. They’d gotten Farkas off the streets and into the luxurious confines of a SHIELD holding cell-- and it probably gave Natasha at least as much satisfaction as it did him, since Farkas was the one who’d gotten the drop on her in Budapest.

“I thought we did okay?” Clint tried, looking at Fury. 

“Not ‘okay,’ no,” Fury told him, crossing his arms. “You were nowhere in the  _ realm _ of ‘okay,’ Barton.”

“Oh.” Shit. What the hell had they done wrong? Or was it just Clint Fury was disappointed with? “Sorry.”

“ _ ‘Sorry’ _ ?” Fury barked. “Motherfuck-- Barton, don’t you ever fucking apologize to me for a mission like that.”

“No, sir?” Clint asked, blinking.

“No. My gastroenterologist, maybe. Look, you three probably shortened my natural life span by ten years with that mission, but as far as SHIELD is concerned? It’s a resounding success. Messy, yeah. Noisy,  _ hell yeah _ \-- it’s gonna be the talk of all the alphabets for the next week.”

“We tried to be, uh, discreet,” Clint said.

Fury shook his head, but a ghost of a smile was starting to overtake his face.

“Right now, you three couldn’t be discreet if I tied you up and dumped you in the basement. I didn’t want discreet; I wanted everyone to know I’ve got the Black Widow and I know how to treat her.”

“Oh.” 

That made an awful lot of sense. And Fury’s pleasure had nothing to do with Clint, after all. 

“‘Oh,’ he says. I’m getting real tired of that, too.” Fury sighed, then leaned forward, trying to catch Clint’s eyes-- eye. “Clint. We’ve been doing this a few weeks now, you and me. Sitting across this goddamned desk from each other while I impart wisdom and you blink in confusion. Right?”

Clint nodded, and tried hard to keep his eyes wide open. It still shocked him how seriously Fury’d taken his promise in the hospital room: a fresh start, this time with the Director himself. He’d sat through most of their sessions half terrified and half trying to memorize every last syllable that fell from Fury’s lips, hoping he’d find the key to staying in his good graces. He wished he had either Natasha’s or Coulson’s ability to be strategic about this kind of shit.

“D’you remember the one man speech,” Fury asked.

That Clint did-- at least mostly.

“A man can do great things once he’s part of something greater?” he said, fumbling with the words a little, trying to get them right.

“Close enough,” Fury said. “You know I laid that one on Agent Romanoff and she just kinda blinked at me. Message received: assimilate and parrot it back whenever useful.”

“That’s Natasha all right,” Clint said, unsurprised that he couldn’t quite hide the bitterness.

“Well of course it is,” Fury told him, “look what she came from. She’s having a hard enough time with understanding that SHIELD doesn’t have an interest in messing with her source code. Stuff like that is a little more advanced. I won’t know for years if I’ve succeeded with her, maybe. Or if you and Coulson have, for that matter. But you….”

_ Yeah,  _ Clint thought.  _ But me _ . 

When Fury’d first given him the speech it’d fallen weirdly flat. Thing was, he  _ knew _ all that already. If the past two years had taught him anything, they’d taught him that SHIELD made him better. Jasper and Melinda May and Bobbi and Doc H and all of Coulson’s Weird Stuff team were all really convincing arguments. Hell, Coulson himself, the jerk, sitting with him in the cold desert night trying to bring him back to his senses, had played a part. SHIELD… at least the SHIELD Clint was most familiar with,  _ Fury’s _ SHIELD, was definitely  _ something greater _ . Clint just spent most of his time trying to live up to it.

“I’m trying,” Clint whispered. “I really am, sir.”

“Yeah, you’re trying all right,” Fury sighed. “Trying my patience. Look-- it flips.” 

Clint blinked, watching Fury intently as he held up two fingers and flipped them over.

“Sir?” he asked.

“It goes both ways,” Fury said. “If SHIELD makes you greater, you don’t think you do the same for SHIELD?”

“Um,” Clint said, feeling mostly disoriented. 

He knew he was useful, yes, and even a good agent. But making SHIELD greater? Clint knew he was no Maria Hill, who’d come in and thoroughly reorganized SHIELD’s HR, or Coulson himself, frustrating as he was, who’d recruited most of the best members of the last few agent cohorts. More personally, Clint knew he could never do what Coulson’d done for him in the desert, exposing all his weak points in order to give Clint the strength to keep going. Clint couldn’t help but give him credit there, much as it hurt: Coulson knew how to inspire a guy.

That just made it all the more bitter that he’d gone behind Clint’s back so much.

“Jesus, Barton,” Fury sighed. “It’s not that hard. Look, we’ll keep working on it. I swear, you three, pains in my asses, all of you.”

“Not Coulson,” Clint protested.

“ _ Especially _ Coulson,” Fury growled. “You and Romanoff, you don’t get it yet-- that’s annoying, but treatable. Phil, he knows what the fuck he needs to do he’s just--” 

_ Just what _ , Clint thought, as Fury broke off, staring at him like he was trying to dive inside Clint’s mind and read it… maybe read back all his memories…. Clint realized he was hunching back in his chair and forced himself to stop. 

Fury sighed, watching him.

“Shit,” he said finally. “Look, I still don’t know if you three are gonna get your acts together or bring my agency down. But whichever it is, Clint, stop thinking you’re the weak link. It ain’t you-- or it’s all of you, you got it? You did good. Damn good.”

“Oh,” Clint said again, then struggled for something else, his mouth open and working.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard the words before, not even just from Jasper and Coulson. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had the words  _ hit _ before-- Coulson’s betrayal wouldn’t have hurt so much if Clint hadn’t believed him so much. So why was it that hearing it in Fury’s voice sounded… new?

“Yeah that’s more like it,” Fury rumbled, then looked back down at his paperwork. “You think about that good. Ask me if you need it spelled out. Translated into anything. Want me to do the interpretive dance. Because while I’m truly fucking impressed, Barton, I don’t want any more missions where you three engage in a series of competitive fucking trust falls. No more missions like that, you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Clint said.

\----

There were, of course, more missions like that. Several more, as Fury sent the three of them out to mop up what he liked to call the “mess” they’d left after the capture of Farkas. 

After the first of them, Clint found himself wandering out of debriefing and into the cafeteria to grab lunch. He’d timed it with the same precision he used on missions, leaving it just long enough that Coulson would already have disappeared back into his office, idly munching on whatever was most portable. Post-debrief lunches had always been pretty perfunctory for Coulson; a switch from down-time lunches when he could spend a good half hour chatting up the grill cook, the cashiers, and any agent that stood still long enough. 

Natasha should be just sitting down with Melinda May, which would give Clint a good excuse for a quick nod in their directions before he took lunch back to his own no-longer-quite-so-temporary quarters. 

_ Nothing to see here, no one isn’t not talking to anyone, just not interrupting. We’re all acting completely naturally and in character. _

Nothing off about Strike Team Delta at all.

So Clint was a little shocked, when he came away from the cashier, to see that May was sitting alone, glancing at her phone. 

And Natasha was off in the far corner, looming over Rick Esterhazy and his friends. Esterhazy had backed so far away from her he was practically sitting in the lap of the blonde behind him, and his eyes were cartoonishly round.

Clint wavered, one foot attempting to step off in pursuit, the other trying to back out of the cafeteria. He tried to tell Foot One that it was just still on mission setting, when backing Natasha up was part of his actual job, and that Foot Two was playing it smart. The last time he’d got between her and Esterhazy, he’d nearly ended up on the floor in shreds. 

She’d made it very clear that she didn’t need defending, and she hadn’t appreciated it when he’d hovered in the laundry room either a few days previously. In his defense, the hour’d been late, it was just her, him, and Rumlow, and Clint liked his boxer briefs airy, so taking the time for the fluff cycle was not about her at all.

Mostly.

Foot One was in it for the long haul though, and Clint gave up trying to move along about the time Natasha hoisted Esterhazy by his own collar. He just stood there, trying to look nonchalant while mangling his prefab sandwich.

After a last shake, Natasha set Esterhazy back down, flicked her hair over her shoulder, and stalked away. May glanced up as she passed, nodded, and went back to her phone. Clint waited until Natasha was well out of sight and May had been distracted by the arrival of her husband before he moved. 

Esterhazy still looked shaken when Clint pulled out a chair and flopped down next to him, finally unwrapping his sandwich.

“Hey,” Clint said, nodding at the group generally. He got a few haphazard nods in return, which was about what he expected. Even before this new Strike Team Delta shit, he’d noticed that there were SHIELD tribes that were much more welcoming to him and the other Weird Stuff personnel, and tribes that were less. He and Esterhazy had been close during training, but they’d drifted a bit once Esterhazy got assigned to counter-terrorism. 

“I swear to fuck she started it,” Esterhazy said, already sounding belligerent. 

Clint put down his sandwich and started laughing.

“Glad you survived,” he managed between chuckles. Foot Two was looking smarter and smarter.

“What the fuck is wrong with you anyway, Clint,” Esterhazy said after a moment, when Clint showed no signs of stopping. 

“What’s wrong with  _ me _ ?” Clint asked, finally slowing down to look at him. “Where do I come into this? I haven’t done a fucking thing to you, Rick.”

“I mean you, all of you-- fucking Strike Team Delta,” Esterhazy grumbled. “Look, we get it, okay? STRIKE’s never been Fury’s favorites, right? We do the nasty shit that some people like to pretend SHIELD doesn’t have to do. But it’s still got to be done, and we’ve got a damn tight rep. And then the Director pulls you and Coulson off Weird Stuff and hands you his pet assassin-- who is off her fucking rocker-- and makes you STRIKE, but not, like, ordinary STRIKE. Nuh uh, you get your own special fucking name and you don’t have to report to anyone. And he does this, what, right after you both blow an op trying to bring her in? Anyone else, anyone else’d be holding their fucking breath and playing it straight, but you--”

“Are holding my breath, I swear. Playing it straight, well,” Clint rolled his eyes, trying to find a way to lighten the mood, “you know that never worked. Rick, c’mon, man, I know what it looks like, okay.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I--” Clint paused, poking at his sandwich to stuff the wilted lettuce back in, “look, I get that it looks bad. Like special favors and shit like that. But-- it’s more like detention, okay? Fury’s not exactly a… it’s not really… c’mon would you want to be living right under the Director’s thumb?”

The onion was falling out, too; clearly radical sandwich surgery was called for. Clint opened it up to begin re-stacking the rings. Esterhazy was silent long enough that Clint finally looked back up.

“Jesus, Clint,” he sighed, looking exhausted. “Yeah, no, I wouldn’t. But then I’m not Hawkeye, am I?”

“What the f-- where did you get that fucking name from?” Clint asked, looking up sharply.

“Rumlow,” Esterhazy shrugged. “He put it together after the Widow came in. And he’s pissed off you apparently thought he was CIA, back in Hackensack.”

“Yeah well I’m not Hawkeye anymore, okay? Any more than Natasha’s still… what she was back in Hackensack. And you still haven’t fucking told me what she was saying to you.” 

Clint knew his voice was starting to rise, and didn’t particularly care.

“You haven’t asked! Fuck, she’s your teammate, get her to tell you.”

“No!” Clint said. “You!” He pointed his sandwich at Esterhazy, who put his hands up.

“Shit, fine! I don’t need twice in one day-- gonna turn around and find Coulson up in my business next. God. Gardenia, okay? That’s all she wanted!”

“Gardenia?” 

He was pretty sure Esterhazy wasn’t fucking with him, but he hadn’t noticed any bouquets being exchanged or anything, and anyway if there was one thing he  _ did _ know about Natasha it was that she had little time for flowers, unless she was using them as improvised weaponry or hiding in them.

“Gardenia! Malkmus! Stephen Malk-- it’s a fucking song. The one we were playing before you... last time we…. She wanted to know what it was, okay? I don’t know why she can’t just fucking Google it, anyway, is she like some kinda… did they have computers in the Red Room or did she just wanna mess with me?” Esterhazy trailed off as Clint snorted.

“Oh. That. Well, fine, maybe now she can let it fucking rest.” 

The stupid song. Natasha’d been humming it off and on and on and on every single damn mission. He didn’t bother to answer Esterhazy’s question since he’d answered it himself; apparently Natasha’d decided how she was going to get her own back. At least now maybe she could let the whole goddamn thing go.

Or… oh god… maybe she was going to start playing it on repeat instead.

Clint shut his eyes against the thought and stood up, gathering his sandwich into the remains of its plastic wrap.

“Thanks, man,” he said, wandering off. “Thanks a bunch.”

“Yeah,” Esterhazy said, “yeah any time.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint noticed Coulson sitting at the table with May and Andrew, watching him-- and then his eyes darted over to Esterhazy, resting there longer than Clint thought was at all necessary.

Whatever; if Coulson wanted to know what was going on, he was welcome to ask Esterhazy himself.

He might, too.

Poor Rick.

\----

The thump of another agent falling backwards off a treadmill made Natasha jerk the earbuds out of her ear, trying not to scan for threats too obviously. 

Two machines over, the rather round Agent Koenig was picking himself up and dusting himself off with little mutters. He was watching as Coulson stalked down the row, his towel slung over one bare shoulder. What inherent quality of Coulson in athletic wear had caused the trouble, Natasha was not sure. He was hardly a heartthrob, though his bicep was acceptably firm and his calves were nearly as shapely as hers. 

Perhaps it was the look on his face, which still hadn’t smoothed out from their last extraction. He’d been scowling ever since their helicopter ride home. It made no kind of sense to her; she’d regarded it as a productive mission, well-executed. They’d finally picked up the woman who had been Farkas’s connection to the Red Room-- not one of Natasha’s own trainers, the woman was a little after her time. But  _ a _ trainer, to be sure.

There had been satisfaction in seeing the woman slumped in a corner of the helicopter, well-bound, as they returned. The woman had not behaved with the control Natasha would have expected from someone connected with the Red Room-- she had cursed Natasha copiously from her capture to the moment Clint had rendered her unconscious during an escape attempt. It was too bad-- she’d been as sloppy in her tirade as in her run, and Natasha felt sure there must be something useful there. She’d expected Coulson to see that, too, but had found him silent, pale, scowling even as he listened.

It was the first time she could remember seeing him faint of heart, and it disappointed her.

Despite herself, a little, or perhaps beside herself, she had grown comfortable working with him and Clint-- at least in the field. And outside of missions, unlike Clint, he gave her space.

A lot of space.

Enough space that she was unsurprised, now, when Coulson walked by her with no more than the same nod as he passed by as he gave Agents Hand and Hartley. He set himself up at the end of the row of treadmills without another glance.

It wasn’t that he didn’t talk to her-- he was polite enough to satisfy nearly anyone’s idea of cordiality, except perhaps Melinda May’s. May had more than once rolled her eyes and muttered things under her breath, mostly where Coulson couldn’t hear her. But May was expecting more of him than Natasha did-- he’d never wavered from his public support of her and she knew she had not earned more.

Why it took until now to occur to Natasha that perhaps everyone else was blind and May had a point, she didn’t know. But occur it did, as she watched Coulson start up his treadmill, set a newspaper on top of the console, and begin running. 

The three people Coulson had worked most closely with that Natasha knew also were Jasper Sitwell, Melinda May, and Clint. Clint had gone from skittish around him to kind of belligerently resigned, but Coulson was relaxed with Fury, Sitwell and May-- nearly as relaxed as he was in the field, when he could sometimes nearly be seen to smile.

Had Natasha been wrong? Was his stiffness around her abnormal? 

She looked again as Agent Blake came over to join Coulson and-- yes, that was a far less chilly smile, and had something maybe a little ironic about the edges.

Natasha looked down at her secondhand Discman, a present from May, watching the CD in it spin idly. She felt her stomach plummet. 

It was one thing to still be on the same footing with Coulson as most other agents were, even after having literally dragged his backside out of a fire in Boca Raton. It was another, profoundly another, to realize that he felt more comfortable around  _ Felix Blake _ than he did her.

She slowed the treadmill to a stop and collected her things, making her way out of the room without a backwards glance.

Was it lack of trust? Was their relationship still warped by whatever was wrong between him and Clint, that seemed only to be growing more iced-over day by day? Whatever it was, Natasha realized she didn’t like it.

She added it to the small but growing list of things she didn’t like for personal reasons, and then underlined it in her head. The list was entirely distinct from the longer lists of things Natasha found inconvenient or unacceptable for mission-related reasons, or detrimental to her health or functioning as a member of SHIELD. It was, in fact, one of Coulson’s unexpected gifts to her, this realization that she could have private likes and dislikes at all.

Natasha enjoyed discovering new likes better-- logically, she supposed. She was as obsessive about them as a five-year old, hence her brief experimentation with the Discman. The CD in question had “Gardenia” on it, plus a Lady Gaga song she’d experimented with after remembering Clint had mentioned Sitwell liking it. She played them on repeat as she worked out, or tried to. Normal people did that, she knew, but this last experiment had proven too much for her. Having her hearing compromised in public sent prickles up the back of her spine. It was frustrating; she was trying to like things, why did her own reflexes have to make it so hard? 

Still, with fits and starts she had added to her list: two songs, Taco Tuesday at the cafeteria, cream of mushroom soup. Nick Fury’s occasional discursions into personal stories whose implications she failed to entirely grasp. The feel of silk against her skin, which she had previously only thought of in terms of its utility in both seducing and slipping away from pursuers. 

Her list of dislikes was longer, and at its head were her personal relationships with Clint and with Coulson. They were unnecessarily messy, especially the one with Clint. There was a tangle in her gut sometimes when he looked up at her from under those stupid lashes of his that she could almost but not quite put a name to. It wasn’t guilt, as far as she could tell. Perhaps it was a kind of space where guilt should be, would be, if she were a different woman. 

Which was another item on her list; the realization that she was continuing to fail in some indefinable fashion, to hold herself to a standard she had no hope of meeting. Those items headed the list by a mile, but behind them rode a host of smaller imps like the taste of licorice; the feel of stiletto heels on wet turf; and the way Andrew Garner, the kindest of men, would sometimes look at Melinda May with lost eyes, like he was watching something precious slip through his fingers.

Natasha reached her room, closed the door behind her, put the CD in her computer, and started it up. As Lady Gaga exhorted her to spin the record, baby, she flopped backwards on her bed and sighed.

When she had accepted Fury’s offer, she had not expected the righting of her memories to be the  _ easy _ part. 

Well, all right-- not so easy, and probably quite expensive in manpower and equipment. But certainly easier than she was finding it to maintain her own sanity around two people  _ quite _ so aggravating as Clint Barton and Phil Coulson.

\----

By the time Strike Team Delta was on its third mission, Nick Fury had set a large glass jar on his desk, filled halfway with pastel-colored Tums. 

The level of antacids dropped with their fourth mission and again with their fifth. Phil suspected Nick brought it out just for their visits. Still, they were making good process on their task, not just Nick’s ulcer. The missions began to blur into each other, a quick succession of manhunts and takedowns of small bases, as the remnants of Farkas’s gang fell into their laps like a string of slavic smuggling pearls. Farkas was talking, fast and furious, giving up his his allies as rapidly as Jasper could write them down. 

Jasper’s star at SHIELD was rising fast, although when Phil mentioned the fact, Jasper just shrugged.

“All I do is write. Farkas is so scared of the three of you that I just mention you might want to sit in, and he starts off again.”

“Me?” Phil asked. “He barely saw me! He knows nothing!”

“Yeah, and you’re my mild threat. If he gets stuck I mention Clint--”

“What?” Barton asked faintly. Phil glanced over to find him looking faintly sick. “I’m not exactly on ex-Stasi level, Jasper.” 

It was an interesting way of putting it, Phil thought. Barton had his strengths and weaknesses in the field, and Phil agreed that interrogation wasn’t one of his areas of specialty. In fact, his preferred method was often to shove someone against the wall-- or pin them to the wall with arrows and growl, which Phil could privately admit would have gotten  _ him _ talking fast. 

“I can see it,” Phil said thoughtfully, following that train of thought, and Barton shot him a profoundly wounded look. 

Phil winced. Clearly, Barton had taken that differently than he’d meant it-- which was likely a good thing, given what Phil had been thinking. But how  _ had _ he taken it? These days, that wounded look seemed to be nearly reflexive. Nick had pointed out more than once that Phil was the one being a dumbass, and Phil mostly agreed. But Nick had no helpful suggestions on dealing with it beyond a reiterated “just use your damn words, Phil.”

In his defense, Phil had thought it would die down, for chrissake, not calcify. He’d apparently lost his ability to communicate with Barton outside the field at all, because he kept on putting his foot back in his mouth and making it worse. At this point, using his words might just put the final nail in his coffin.

“Jesus, Barton,” he said, shrinking a little under the stink-eye and casting about for a plausible explanation that didn’t involve him being inappropriately turned on by the thought of being interrogated at arrow-point, “I just meant because of the goat. That’s all.”

“Okay, well,” Barton said after a moment, “fair enough.” 

“The irony here is that Agent Romanoff is the one he should worry about, interrogation-wise,” Phil added, trying to change the subject.

“If I had interrogated him, he would not know it, and I am sure he realizes that,” Romanoff pointed out. “He was the one attempting to sell me, after all.”

“Yeah, that might be why he fainted the one time I mentioned you’d be coming in,” Jasper drawled. Romanoff turned back to him, eyebrows raised. Jasper spread out his hands in a  _ what can you do _ gesture.

“If I had wanted to physically injure him, I would have when we apprehended him,” Romanoff said stiffly. “I don’t understand this.” 

“You do have a reputation for ruthlessness,” Jasper pointed out. “A really extensive one. One that had our Director fighting off the NSA and the CIA. You guys were busy in… Boulogne, I think. Maybe Boca Raton.” 

“They can’t have her,” Barton snapped, then bit his lip as Romanoff turned to level a skeptical eyebrow at him-- not that Phil could blame her. In her place, still uncertain her mind was entirely her own and navigating an entire sea of unknowns daily, he’d have handled himself far worse, he knew. In point of fact, he didn’t think his first days at SHIELD had gone much better. He  _ knew _ Barton’s hadn’t.

“They don’t want to  _ imprison _ her,” Phil tried to reassure Barton, before he could irk Romanoff any further. “I think they want a seminar.”

“I  _ know  _ that. Like I said.”

Phil conceded the point with a shrug; his comment had re-directed Romanoff’s eyebrow at him, which hadn’t exactly been in the plan. It seemed like a good time for discreet silence. 

“It’s all right,” Jasper sighed, “Director Fury threatened to have someone hold up the appropriations bill and they all shut up. But seriously, Agent Romanoff, it’s going to be hard to convince anyone you’re subtle after Bucharest.”

Romanoff sighed and settled lower in her chair, but Phil thought he heard her mutter:

“You clothesline  _ one nun _ ….”

Barton sniggered, and Phil found himself smiling unexpectedly.

“Okay, we’re done for now,” Jasper sighed, putting his papers back together. “Hey-- Clint. Walk me out? I’ve got something I need to give you.”

“What? Yeah, sure.” As Barton got up to go, Phil could hear him still chuckling under his breath, repeating Romanoff’s phrase. He risked a glance at her, to find her looking back at him, searching for something. He wondered if she caught the dregs of fondness in his face, before he managed to tuck them away along with the quirk to his lips. 

They went their separate ways in the hallway, and as Phil wandered he played that moment over in his mind a couple times. He would be damned before he’d admit it to Nick, but he thought he’d finally caught a glimpse of what Nick thought he had in Strike Team Delta off the field, not just on it. What they could have been, if Phil hadn’t managed to lose control of himself unforgivably in Barton’s hospital room, if the Black Widow hadn’t been given that one fatal order from the Red Room, the one that led her to abandon Hawkeye in Hackensack. If all of them were whole. 

He wished he had a quarter of Nick’s confidence that they could ever get themselves there. 

\----

Clint waited until Coulson was safely around the corner before kicking a trash can and growling. 

“Clint?” Jas asked, stopping short in the hallway and blinking at him through his wire-rims. “What the fuck?”

“I just--” Clint paused, swallowing back everything that was on the tip of his tongue. Coulson could still barely stand to talk to Clint off-mission and the one time he did, Clint got  _ that _ ? That weird half-scolding half-knowing bullshit? Had there been anything in that conversation Coulson thought Clint’d got  _ right? _

Maybe this was Coulson’s way of treating Clint like any other SHIELD agent, of trying to do what Clint’d screamed at him to do back in the hospital room post-Budapest? If so, Clint was not a fan. While it’d sucked in retrospect, having a CO who was secretly coddling him, at the time Clint would have said there’d been a lot of respect between them. Now, their working relationship mostly seemed to involve Coulson not knowing what to do with him unless they were in the middle of six-handedly taking down an entire heavily-guarded lab devoted to the manufacture of silent explosives. 

“You know,” Jasper mused, “what I am gonna miss least about Strike Team Delta is the way I keep waiting for the moment-- the absolutely, one hundred percent guaranteed inevitable moment-- this fucking soap opera you three’ve got going on spills over into the mission.”

“It won’t,” Clint said reflexively, then squeezed his eyes shut. “Ugh. It’s that obvious, huh?”

“Yeah, Clint, you could see it from space. I get Romanoff all right; it’s Coulson I’m confused about. What the fuck did he  _ do _ ?”

“Well, I-- what?” Clint turned to stare back at Jasper. “What d’you mean what did  _ he _ do? Don’t you mean what did  _ I _ do?”

“Clint,” Jasper sighed, tugging on his arm and starting them off down the hallway again, “I’m not the mind-reader Coulson is but I’m not dumb. I’ve seen you when you put your foot in your mouth. You panic, then you overcompensate. Certainly did with me. This doesn’t look like that. Granted, I’ve seen what Coulson does, too, and usually he tries to smooth things over instead of this avoidant shit. So my guess is whatever he did is big. Yeah?”

“Who the fuck let you get so smart, Jas?”

“Comes with the Level Six I guess. This isn’t still about Budapest, is it?”

“Not sure it was ever about Budapest at all,” Clint said, surprising himself as the words came out. Truly, though, sometime between Miami and Arizona, he and Coulson had set all the dominos up. If Budapest hadn’t come along, something was gonna knock ‘em down some day.

“Well okay, then what?” Jasper asked. Clint shook his head and kept going-- Jasper let him get them all the way down to the elevators before he pulled Clint out of the way of the usual SHIELD foot traffic, and shook him. “Damnit, Clint, let me help, okay? I won’t be able to pull your head out of your ass forever-- or Coulson’s either, for that matter.”

The sad part was that even with his relationship with Coulson at an all-time low, Clint still had a stopped-short moment where he misunderstood. He had a sudden flash of memory: Phillip’s head, or at least tongue, quite nearly up Clint’s…. Clint blinked himself free and glared at Jasper, just on sheer principle.

“Okay,” he said finally, “you wanna help? Tell me one thing, okay? Straight up?”

“Okay,” Jasper said, looking curious. 

Two agents passed them in the hallway, looking over nearly reflexively, and Clint decided that privacy was maybe somewhat lacking. He pulled Jasper into an opening elevator and jabbed a floor. 

“You okay to grab a coffee or something? Or head to your office?” he asked Jasper, who shook his head.

“No I-- no. But there’s a huddle room down around the corner, let’s grab that.” 

It wasn’t until they were in the relative safety of the huddle room, which looked like a converted closet more than a conference room even with the table and two chairs, that Clint spoke again. And then it was only because he was aware that chickening out now, after all the hoopla, would probably permanently piss Jasper off.

“So was I the only fucking asshole at SHIELD who actually thought I was getting shit on my own merit, or was there someone in, like, janitorial or something that maybe didn’t know I was getting special treatment?” he asked, and Jasper’s eyes went nearly as wide as his wire-rims.

“Where the fuck did this bug up your butt fly in from? You didn’t-- you got  _ everything _ on your own goddamn merit, Clint. I watched you do it.”

“Oh yeah? Then why’d Fury basically say I was Coulson’s fucking favorite, huh? Come on, Jas, tell me the truth for once,” Clint bit his lip as that came out, and tried to stuff it back in. “I mean-- I don’t mean that exactly.”

“Then what the hell do you mean Clint?” Jasper asked, looking dark. Clint sighed, and looked over at the twelve month calendar posted by the door, paydays marked in green. He counted all 26 before he felt he had his mouth back under control enough to continue.

“I’m sorry, I just-- I look back and… the therapist, Jas. You switched my therapist. Coulson signed off on it. Flight school. The-- hell, the whole damn reason I’m here at SHIELD at all. Oh-- and me being on Weird Stuff instead of off doing sniper work with STRIKE. Are you really gonna tell me Coulson never got you to give me anything I didn’t deserve?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m going to say.” Jasper paused for a moment, shaking his head, looking at Clint like he’d had his head and ass switched-- which Clint was starting to feel like maybe he had, after all. 

“Clint,” he continued in a measured voice, “tell me something: if you hadn’t gotten Doc H, d’you think you’d be here right now?”

Clint shook his head, and Jasper nodded.

“I agree. That’s why I asked Coulson to sign off on a re-eval for you. I asked him, not the other way around-- well,” Jasper paused, “maybe it was mutual. Barrie was a fucking quack who’d been two years from retirement for ten. I am telling you, Clint, you didn’t deserve that. As for flight school, I asked Coulson for that, too. You were so damn bored you were driving me crazy. You can either thank me for noticing half this shit and knowing who to go to, or you can realize that all we did was get you exactly what you deserve.”

“That--” Clint searched for words for a moment. That was so far from what he’d heard from Fury he wasn’t sure if he was maybe hearing things. “But that doesn’t… it’s still a whole shit-ton of work to go through just for me…” he finished, aware he was trailing off.

“Oh, I’m not gonna pretend Coulson isn’t kinda weird where you’re concerned,” Jasper said. “He was dead-set on recruiting you, then sent me to track you down in goddamn Rotterdam instead of going himself. And as for getting you on his projects, I don’t know where to-- no. Yes I do. Clint he was so fucking far from wanting either of us on the team that he nearly stopped talking to me altogether for a few weeks. I don’t know what changed his mind, but he wasn’t exactly panting to get us under him, you know. And that was even though he knew damn well you were  _ exactly  _ the kind of crazy he needed. In fact, if I had to guess?” 

Clint leaned forward despite himself, and Jasper rolled his eyes.

“If I had to guess, I think the idea scared him.”

Well that wasn’t in the least what Clint had expected.

“What the--  _ why _ , Jasper? Why the hell would I… that’s ridiculous.” Clint snapped his mouth shut on another round of protests-- he’d probably given away way too much already.

“Yeah I’d have said that too,” Jasper replied, drawing the words out, “which is why I decided I must’ve been wrong. I don’t know, Clint, I can’t tell you why. Usually, something like that, you’d assume there was a prior relationship or something else that would compromise one of you, but that-- well, I assume you’d have told me or he would. That’s easy, just a quick conflict of interest disclosure to file and then done. Right?”

“Right,” Clint said faintly. Jasper looked at him for long enough that Clint thought maybe he’d finally guessed, maybe he could see the way Clint was trying to calculate how many orgasms equalled a prior relationship. Finally he shook his head and started again.

“I  _ can _ tell you that he agreed with me every time I asked for something for you-- and neither of us ever felt we were giving you shit you hadn’t worked your ass off for. So does it matter whether it was him or me signing off on the paperwork?”

“I--” Clint sighed, and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yeah honestly Jas? It kinda does. Because you know me, you talk to me, you-- you don’t pretend to-- Jesus. All I wanted was to start over, how’d it get to be this mess? I didn’t want anyone giving me a hand up.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come to SHIELD, Clint, and anyway that’s bullshit and you know it. You’ve spent more time helping everyone else out than they did you, I sometimes think.”

“How’d you figure?” Clint asked, confused. In his accounting, he came up short every time. Jasper side-eyed him.

“Well, I don’t know, I figure you’re ahead by a few in the ‘who saved who’s life most’ contest with me, you jerk. But look, I remember when you were still too damn messed up and scared of being kicked out to squeak, and you still managed to make friends with Esterhazy and May and Bobbi.”

“That wasn’t, I wasn’t-- we were just…” Clint struggled with how to explain that he’d been trying desperately to find hooks to keep them interested in him; that was why he’d given Esterhazy knife lessons, why he and May and swapped stealth tricks. He’d gained more than they ever had, he was sure.

“And how ‘bout me, huh?” Jasper asked Clint, then shook his head. “Look, whether you think we should’ve wanted to help you or not, we did. Or hey-- how do you think Romanoff feels about all your creepy hovering, huh?”

“I am  _ not _ creepily hovering,” Clint lied. 

“Oh come on,” Jasper snorted, “you think I didn’t see you trying to white knight it when Esterhazy and STRIKE were picking on her? You think I don’t hear this shit? Think Melinda doesn’t tell me you show up every time she and Romanoff spar in the big gym? That you convinced Agent Services to move her to a room with better egress points and a view?”

“Um,” Clint said, a little stunned. He hadn’t realized it all added up to quite that much….

“ Why are you doing that for her?” Jasper asked, sounding honestly curious. “She left you to die, Clint-- why not let her drown?”

“She’s on Strike Team Delta, Jas, pretty sure Fury’d have my hide.” 

The roll of Jasper’s eyes let Clint know what he thought about that-- which was unfair. He’d been mostly telling the truth, at least as far as he could tell; his thoughts had a tendency to run in circles chasing their own tails when he considered Natasha Romanoff.

One thing he  _ was  _ sure of was that he’d never met anyone half as spectacular in the field as Natasha. He was damned if any other agency was going to get to find that out, not only because that’d likely come back and bite Fury on the ass, but because not a single one of them deserved her. Which meant she had to make it at SHIELD. There wasn’t any other option. 

And that meant he needed to make sure she made it. 

Of course, he was still probably headed for fiery disaster with Delta, but the ride was just as exhilarating as it ever was. As long as he could keep his work life out of his bed this time, they might all survive the crash. Not that it seemed likely anyone was trying to get into his bed-- or even be friends with him. After all, liking each other wasn’t anywhere in the mission specs. If it was, he was sure someone would have pointed it out to him by now. 

“I’m sure she’s pointed out to you that she can take care of herself,” Jasper told Clint.

“Maybe, yeah, but can doesn’t mean have to, right?”

“Clint,” Jasper sighed, his voice tight, “do you even listen to yourself?”

It took Clint  _ far _ longer than it should have to do anything but blink owlishly at Jasper, which might have been response enough. He was too lost in the past, feeling the acid bite on his tongue of the words he’d spat at Phillip so long ago.  _ I don’t need you. I’ll do this myself.  _ More recently-- too damn recently, really, if the wound was still so raw, he remembered demanding to know why Coulson’d spent so much time passing him shit under the table if he knew Clint could do it himself.

Oh.

Oh,  _ shit _ .

“Wow, Clint,” Jasper said, “whatever happened in your face… it looks like you could really use a drink.”

A whole ocean, Clint decided. If that was enough to wash away the bitter taste of his own hypocrisy. Or help him sort out what to do, what it meant that he’d been doing to Natasha the same damn things that Coulson had done to him.

“Got time for one?” he asked hopefully.

Jasper shook his head.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” he said, looking sympathetic. “I’ve got a plane to catch. I’m off to the Hub tonight.”

“Okay, when you get back?” Clint asked, as they started walking back towards the elevators.

“Well yeah,” Jasper agreed, “for sure.”

They were silent until they got to the hangar and Jasper pointed out his plane. There was a woman in a teal and black suit standing by it, waiting. She raised her hand to wave at Jasper as Clint watched.

“Cecelia’s going with?” Clint asked, confused.

“Yeah,” Jasper said, sounding… not cautious exactly, but as if he was handling dynamite that had been stored in uncertain conditions for a number of years. 

“Okay?” Clint said, reflexively checking the fuzz on Jasper’s head-- no, he was still bald and nearly shiny. “That’s…that’s… unexpected.”

“Is it? We’ve been back together since I got-- since the hospital.” Jasper was still walking towards the quinjet, if slower now, and Clint maybe rushed his response a little.

“You’ve been back together at least three times now.”

“That,” Jasper nodded his head, wincing, “that is true. But I think it’s gonna work this time, Clint. We talked it out, made a deal--”

“But how’s she going to deal when you get back in the field, Jas? That was, like, half your arguments.”

“I’m not going back in the field,” Jasper said, and Clint stopped dead in the middle of the hangar floor and stared at him. “At least not on the kind of operations we used to do. I’m going to the Hub to do a rotation hiring and training personnel. Time for some more professional development, I think.”

“You-- but you-- Fury wanted you to take over Coulson’s teams. Right? That was the whole idea-- Coulson could be Delta because Weird Stuff was gonna be in good hands with you and Pao and everyone.” Clint realized he was waving both hands at Jasper and stuffed them behind his back.

“It’s not-- Fury’ll call me back when he needs me on that. He’s the Director after all. But this is an opportunity for me. While I was laid up, taking care of your asses, I realized there was a whole skillset I didn’t have. Time I learned, figured out what my next step is. And… and I don’t want to marry SHIELD, the way Fury and Coulson seem to have done.”

“You… want to marry Cecelia?” Clint asked.

Jasper nodded, beaming at her from across the hangar floor.

“Yeah, I think I do. We’re engaged. Well-- once I get the ring. She’s-- Clint, I know we’ve had a rough time, but I keep coming back to her and she keeps coming back to me and that has to mean something. And she’s willing to compromise if I am. We’re both committed to this. To us. She’s transferred to the Hub, I’m going with-- and we’ll see what happens from there.”

“That is…” Clint shut his mouth just before he said  _ seriously stupid _ . Who the hell was he to judge Jasper’s relationship, after all, given that he was the one with three SHIELD ex… somethings… all of them awkward. And Cecelia had been there for Jasper when Clint hadn’t been-- and Clint’d been the one to put Jasper in the hospital bed in the first place.

And well, everyone deserved a second chance. Of course, it was about a fifth chance this time, but that was Jasper’s business, not his. Clint swallowed his disappointment.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he said instead, hearing it rasp, knowing that at least would be sincere. 

“Fuck,” Jasper replied, and pulled him into a hug. A manly, back-patting sort of hug. As he did, Clint felt something slip into his hand, and pulled back to look.

It was his mix CD.

“Cec’d just lose it,” Jasper told him, scrunching his nose. “You keep it. And uh… take care of yourself, right?”

“Right,” Clint said, and waved him off. 

He waited until the quinjet was in the air before turning around-- which was when he saw Coulson, standing quietly about twenty feet away, watching the jet as well. He  _ looked _ calm enough, behind his aviator glasses, but Clint could see the little bounce to his feet, the twitch at the side of his mouth before he turned and left. Clint wondered if he felt it, too, the end of everything they’d built together over the last two years.

And then he gulped, because he realized that somehow, for just a moment, he’d forgotten to feel bitter about Coulson. He tried to bring it back, to dredge up the desperate, confused, frustration he’d felt during their argument. But all that came up was Jasper shaking his head and telling Clint he thought maybe Coulson was scared of him.

“Fuck,” Clint muttered to himself, and headed for the archery range. If he was going to be a mess, he figured, he might as well get some practice out of it.

\---

“Do you listen to anything?” Natasha asked May in a moment of relative quiet.

“What?” May grunted, and took the opportunity to aim a blow at Natasha’s ribcage. It was easily dodged, and Natasha passed up the first and second most-obvious openings it gave her and went for a kick. May caught her foot anyway and pulled. Natasha let herself be unbalanced and converted her tumble into a roll.

“Music. When you gave me the Discman you didn’t give me any,” she said as she came up. “So I wondered.”

“Why?” May asked, spinning to try and face Natasha before she could be attacked from behind. Natasha was ready for it, moving around to her right to go for a headlock. 

They were sparring in the main gym for the first time in a week and it was so late at night it was nearly morning. No one was around to watch-- not even Clint, for once. It was nice not to have to pay attention to bystanders as well as her opponent. Although, truth be told, if anyone had tried anything while Clint was there, he’d likely have taken them out before either May or Natasha could, just to be difficult. 

“Ow,” Natasha said, as May jerked herself downwards out of the headlock and nearly took Natasha out with her. She paused, shaking her arm out, and realigned her train of thought. “Just curious what you like to listen to.”

“I…” May paused herself. They were both tiring out now. Soon one of them would back off and bow out, but May didn’t seem ready to do so yet. “I’m not--” she batted away Natasha’s tardy attack--”Andrew was the one who chose, usually. He… cared more than I did-- oof!”

“Hah!” Natasha said, more a reaction to having successfully gotten her thighs around May’s throat to bring her down rather than to the admission, even though a part of her mind was busy with it. May took the tumble about as well as Natasha’d thought she would, and there was no time for talking.

As they were towelling off a little while later, May looked away from Natasha, across the silent mats and into the far dim corners of the empty balcony.

“I’m not sure I’m doing you any good,” she sighed.

Natasha paused to process this, and also the uncomfortable falling swoop in her gut. It bore more similarity to what she’d felt on the few times she’d failed her Red Room handlers than she had expected. 

“Why not?” she asked May, in lieu of the  _ but I need you _ that had bubbled up, unbidden, in her mind.

May gestured to the mats.

“You’re as good as I am at hand-to-hand-- and close-quarters knife work, and baton work. You’re better than I am with firearms. And now that you’re out in the field, you’re getting better with SHIELD protocol daily. There’s not much more I can teach you.”

“I still need a sparring partner?” Natasha tried.

“You do, but maybe I should introduce you to someone whose technique matches yours better. Bobbi-- well, no, I can’t introduce you to her. She’s on the West Coast now,” May looked frustrated, shaking her head and searching for words. “You need someone who can challenge you more. Your technique is… sneaky. Vicious. Which is good.”

The last part was an afterthought, and May didn’t look as though she actually believed it. Natasha realized May wasn’t referring to any of the blows she’d landed with feet or hands, but to whatever gut punch she’d induced May to give herself by asking about music.

“I was trying,” Natasha said, startling herself with the intensity in her voice, “to be friendly.”

“I know.” May let a hand rest on her shoulder for just a moment, then pointed them both towards the locker room.

It wasn’t until they were in the communal showers together, scalding water beating out the worst of their incipient bruises, that May spoke again. 

“How is your team holding up?” she asked. 

It landed with the force of a blow, and Natasha felt actually winded for a moment. 

“Sore subject?” May asked, and Natasha laughed weakly.

“A little. I’m not sure they are holding up at all,” she admitted, testing it out on her tongue as she went to see if it tasted like truth. The bald honesty felt better than expected, some lingering Red Room aftertaste disappearing. 

May cocked her head, waiting, as Natasha fought the instinct to hide her team’s weaknesses. 

“We function well enough in the field,” Natasha managed at last. “As well as the first time. Better, even, I think, in some ways. But we are… it takes so much energy each time. I am told SHIELD normally ensures downtime between missions. We haven’t had much. I do understand why--” their work was too efficient, Agent Sitwell had explained. New leads came in fast and furious and Fury feared the consequences of letting them hang or trusting them to other agents. 

For Natasha, this was not out of the ordinary; the Red Room did not believe in idle hands or minds, and was already the devil’s playground. Or so a trainer had told her once when she had asked, as politely as she possibly could, hands crossed behind her back and standing stiffly upright, if she might have just one night of uninterrupted sleep before her next assignment. 

May handed her a long-handled loofah, and Natasha gripped it tight, dragging herself back to the present.

“Maybe it would be better if we had more time away from each other. Maybe that is what they need. They still stop talking to each other as soon as we are wheels-up after extraction, maybe that is why. They seem so resigned to it now. I do not think they were like this before I came?”

“You know they weren’t,” May said, and Natasha spun, because the tone was harsher than anything she’d heard from the woman before. 

“I never wanted to--”

“I know,” May sighed, her voice thawing a little and a note of apology creeping into it. “I know you didn’t. They were never friends, you know. Coulson was our ops commander on certain missions, that was all. He was closer to Jasper and me, but we’d known him longer and we were more senior.”

“But people say Barton was--” Natasha stopped to consider her choice of words carefully. She didn’t need another bruise from May’s tongue. 

“People say a lot of things.” May replied, before picking up her shampoo and putting herself directly under the stream of water. Natasha decided she’d officially lost that round, but her mind did not stop working.

_ People _ , like this Agent Rick Esterhazy and his STRIKE friends, said a great many things about Clint, and about how quickly he’d progressed at SHIELD with Coulson behind him. But they also said a great many things about her. 

And just as many people said other things, said if Coulson didn’t want him, they would take Agent Barton for their team in a hot instant. Said that of course Director Fury had rounded up all the best agents and was keeping them for himself. Asked why the hell he’d broken up the Weird Stuff teams, which had worked so well under Coulson’s coordination. And then they inevitably muttered something about  _ of course, that was before Budapest _ … and Natasha would quietly slip away before someone could realize she’d been listening.

“It’s not my strong suit.” May sounded defensive, and Natasha cleared water and soap out of her eyes and turned. She was standing under the water, arms akimbo, and looking mulish. “It’s not my business, either. Analyzing that relationship, I mean. But Coulson is a good man. Barton is too. Both of them are just a little… they’re men. They both let their personal issues get in the way sometimes. In general, I mean-- it isn’t you. I don’t think it’s you, anyway. Are either of them making you think it is?”

“Bah, who can tell?” Natasha waved her razor in a gesture of contempt, and it nearly went flying. Perhaps she did not need to shave after all; she liked her skin where it was. “Coulson is still polite and cordial and complimentary-- but I wonder if he trusts me at all.” 

The realization that his cordiality had been hiding a larger discomfort with her still hurt, even though subsequent missions had reinforced how much faith he put in her in the field. 

“Clint I know does not,” Natasha continued. “Neither of them have said anything, but when would they?”

Anyway they didn’t have to; she herself did it for them. It had been her job to sow discord and misinformation. That was what the Red Room trained her to do, and once upon a time she was so good at it she could do it even in her sleep. Even though their false memories breaking into pieces around her those skills remained. She did not want to think she was trying to come between Clint and Coulson this time, but how would she know? The results spoke for themselves.

“Does Fury think any of this is your fault?” May asked.

“No.” 

Fury had, in fact, told her in explicit terms that it was no fault of hers that her partners were dumbasses, and to leave them be and concentrate on her own needs. Then he’d given her a copy of “Troubleman” for the music collection she’d started scavenging from anyone who would sit still long enough. Doctor Heilman had said something similar, apropos of nothing, in their meeting after the mission that had brought the trainer in. 

“Trust Fury,” May said. “He keeps secrets, but not ones like that.” 

She said it like it settled the matter, and Natasha wished, oh how she wished, that it did. They were silent, smoothing conditioner through their hair and then rinsing, for a little space longer. 

“I do not like it,” Natasha said at last, trying to be casual even though the word still felt foreign and unsupported on her tongue. She decided to give it reinforcement. “I do not think it’s sustainable. Eventually we  _ will _ end up making mistakes in the field. It takes more and more effort to keep it together each time we go out-- and they are so tired.” I _ am so tired _ . “This clean up cannot go on much longer or we will fall apart.”

And it would have been ended before it began, if she hadn’t been dropped in the middle of SHIELD’s long-planned sting. Clint would not have blown the Budapest operation apart, Coulson would not have been removed from his responsibilities, and all would have been well. 

“Coulson seems to think highly of you,” May shrugged, “at least your mission work.”

But Natasha had, by being so weak as to be captured, torn his world apart. Even if he respected her work now, he had to feel it was so, or else why was he so chilly? None of her considerable skills had been enough to make up for that.

“I’m glad he does,” Natasha said, to close the subject, “but it doesn’t help with Barton.” 

They were both out of the shower and towelling off now, and May tossed hers on the bench with a wet, frustrated splat.

“I told you I’m not doing you any good, Natasha. This is-- I don’t know how to help you with this. If I were in any kind of position to get involved I’d probably have tried to glare them both into submission. But you-- you’re the one-- there are things you can do that I just  _ can’t _ . Skills you have.”

Natasha considered this as she pulled on her jeans, because if she’d answered immediately it would have been a horrified  _ no _ that would have given away every pressure point she had.

It was true, after all. If she wanted, she could smooth their way. She was equally trained at manipulating people into cooperation as she was at disruption. 

All she would have to do, she thought, was let Clint see that she-- no. Let  _ Coulson _ see how confused she was inside, still. Well-- let him see a carefully-crafted hint of it. Come to him for help navigating SHIELD, flatter his need to comfort wounded things. It would make sense to him that May was reaching her limits, that Fury had other things to do, that she needed an additional protector. 

And Clint, well-- Clint never could resist someone who needed his help, either. That would be easy enough, even with his current resentment. All she needed to do was be a little bit grateful of his help, instead of prickling up. 

Once she had them both in hand, it would be so easy to get them into situation where they would have to talk. They could reconcile over a shared need to care for her. 

Of course, if she handled it badly it would alienate Clint. He seemed to shy away from showing Coulson weakness, for reasons Natasha didn’t yet understand, but gave her pause. Honestly, the idea of breaking herself open to Coulson, when she’d wanted so badly for him to see her as a full team member capable of handling herself, not as a Dottie Underwood redux, was abhorrent now that she thought about it. The thought of forcing gratitude on Clint was even worse. It would work, but only if she ignored all her own dawning preferences to do what was needed.

“I… do not think that would be wise,” she told May finally, and got another shrug in return.

“You know best. Like I said, I’m not good at this. Maybe it would make things worse, and SHIELD needs-- Fury needs-- your team to function. His word is riding on it. So’s Coulson’s career. I like Barton fine-- he was always a good teammate and agent-- but Coulson? I… owe him. Andrew wouldn’t be at SHIELD if Coulson hadn’t recruited him. Neither would your Doctor Heilman. He… SHIELD changed. Fury and Coulson and Hill changed it. You wouldn’t have been welcome here before them-- and I wouldn’t have wanted to work here.”

Natasha watched silently as May buttoned up her shirt, warming to the topic as she went.

“It’s not just about Strike Team Delta,” she said, as she buckled on her watch, “Fury’s got a lot riding on you. You’re all good agents, Natasha. You are some of the best I’ve ever seen at SHIELD. It’s been an honor working with all three of you. You have to be able to do this. We  _ need _ you to succeed.” 

She turned away from Natasha long enough to yank her hair into a ponytail, glaring at the mirror as she did. She was still facing herself, not Natasha, when she continued.

“Jazz,” she said at last. “Andrew would play Coltrane. I loved it. And music from when we were young. Vandross. David Byrne. Mostly, now… he doesn’t put on music. At least not when I’m around.”

They didn’t say much more after that.

\----

Strike Team Delta was called out less than two hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, without time to do more than grab their go-bags and put their feet back in boots-- or oxfords, in Coulson’s case. 

As the quinjet shook, preparing to take off, Natasha watched from her corner. Clint shuffled around in his bag, his grumbling growing increasingly loud as he failed to find whatever he was looking for. Coulson watched him from across the belly of the plane, seemingly too tired to bother concealing his interest for once.

Natasha shuffled in her own bag, pulling out her earphones and Discman and settling in, trying to ignore the high-decibel silence from her teammates. Something’d unstuck them, but she didn’t have time to figure out what it was, just to hope it didn’t carry over into mission time. 

She queued up the first song on her new CD and pressed play, waiting for the music to turn her mind off the way it had been doing. 

Along about the first chorus, Natasha realized it wasn’t going to work this time. She hit pause just a second too late, the phrase  _ It is strong and you are tough, but a heart is not enough _ echoing in her ears. There was a headache building in her temples; she closed her eyes against it and let the Discman rest in her lap, her fingers running fitfully over its edges. 

At least this mission was supposed to be short: land in Vancouver, grab Labanzov, who’d finally shown his face, call for extraction, and bug-- as Clint said-- out. No time for them to fall apart.

Later, Natasha would admit that she could, on occasion, be completely, utterly, 180 degrees, wrong about a call. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: their luck had to end sometime-- which might actually be a lucky break, itself. Contains content warnings.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strike Team Delta's luck finally runs out, their mission runs extremely long, and it turns out they are still their own worst enemies... but maybe they'll finally talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a content warning for the aftermath of violence and PTSD. Please see the end notes for more details.

Fury’d promised them it would  be a simple mission-- although that was what Fury had said about the first one, too. Natasha had decided early on that he had a highly ironic definition of “simple. She should have known better than to believe him; nothing else about this protracted mopping-up had gone according to plan. Nor did it this time.

They had not been able to catch Labanzov before he had disappeared into the crowd on the docks in Vancouver, where SHIELD’s intel people put him on board a coast-hopping cruise ship bound for Mazatlan. Dirty, singed, and utterly lacking in identification or luggage, Strike Team Delta had talked its way onto the ship and into a mini-suite with a balcony, which none of them expected to need for more than a quick shower a place to plot their next moves. SHIELD had arranged an extraction team disguised as a medevac chopper, for use when they found Labanzov.

Except that they didn’t. They found one of Labanzov’s bodyguards, who had checked into a garden villa using Labanzov’s faked identification. He was-- as Natasha found out through diligent plying with alcohol and a few hours in an insufficiently-hot hot tub outside the Topsiders Bar-- going ahead to Mazatlan to prepare for his boss, who had booked onto a later ship and left his lackey to be a decoy. 

Meanwhile, Natasha had rapidly expanded her list of personal likes and dislikes. She wished she could have put the lists’ sudden growth down to the kind of exponential learning curve one experienced with new skills (and liking things for their own reasons was a very new skill) but quite frankly she thought the blame belonged to her teammates.

To her dislikes, she’d added several items. Cruise ship accommodations topped her list-- far too crowded, no actual shower just a damp spot in a tiled closet, glorified couches for beds, and they weren’t even true suites at all when the only partition was a curtain (as Coulson had pointed out.) Cruise ship food also featured on the list, because how did ten restaurants and four cafes covering seven different cuisines manage to all taste exactly alike anyway (as Clint had asked?) Really, Natasha decided, she just disliked cruise ships in general. 

Also, as long as she was on the topic, she was none too fond of sticky children at buffets, buffet line sausages, the aforementioned insufficiently-hot hot tubs, slow drains, Clint clipping his toenails, and the way that Clint and Coulson kept tripping over each other in their efforts to be elaborately polite and professional. Natasha thought the rest of it would not have been half so aggravating without the constant drip-drip of their emotions. 

There had been one blessed moment where Natasha had thought perhaps they’d made progress with their issues. It had been just after Agent Bobbi Morse had met them in San Diego. She had finally delivered them clothing that hadn’t been bought at the shipboard boutiques, plus weaponry and other practical tech to replace what they’d lost in British Columbia. Clint had barely made it back to their stateroom before he was digging into the suitcases.

He went straight past his collapsible bow, to Natasha’s vague shock, and pulled out a black t-shirt, ripping off his Hawaiian shirt with his other hand. He was more than halfway into the shirt before Coulson came in and stopped in the doorway, staring at him.

“Barton?” he asked, faintly.

“Hold up,” Clint grunted, turning around and pulling the shirt down over his ribs with an air of satisfaction.

“Huh. Fishbone. Nice.” Coulson said, starting to turn away. He turned back when he heard Clint curse. Clint was staring down at the shirt, looking like he’d been shot. “Are-- are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Clint said, “yeah, fine. Just… this was Jas’s. He loaned it to me once and I couldn’t find it to return it. Bobbi must’ve… it must’ve been in the boxes.”

“Ah,” Coulson said. 

Natasha had carefully ignored them both in favor of unpacking the items Agent Morse had collected for her, sighing happily over shoes with at least an infinitesimal amount of tread and air-cushioned insoles. She might not understand what had happened between Morse and Clint that had caused him to spend the entire meeting on the docks avoiding her eyes even while talking to her privately, but in at least one thing Morse’s judgement was sound: she clearly knew her practical stilettos. 

“Guess it’s too late to give back now,” Clint moped, still looking at the shirt. “Cecelia’d probably just decide it didn’t have the right karma or something.”

“Aura, I think,” Coulson said, then paused. “Or is it feng shui?”

“That’s furniture,” Natasha put in, and was roundly ignored. Both men had dropped onto opposite sides of the bed and were looking at the shirt sadly.

“Dunno,” Clint said, “but I miss him.”

“It was a good move for him,” Coulson replied. “Sensible. A step up.” He didn’t sound at all convinced. Natasha paused, fingers still deep in a pile of satin unmentionables that landed just barely on the professional side of crossing several boundaries, and waited to see what would happen next. 

“Yeah,” Clint sighed. “Something less weird for sure. More stable. Bet Cecelia is real pleased.”

“I’m sure she’s just relieved he’s--  _ what the hell is he doing going back to her? _ ” 

Coulson’s mid-sentence eruption was so unexpected Natasha had half-turned to fling a three-inch Manolo pump at him before she stopped herself. 

Clint threw up his hands.

“I  _ know _ right? It makes no goddamn sense! D’you know what Bobbi said, when I told her? She said ‘did he have a head injury?’”

“Um,” Coulson replied. Clint bit his lip.

“Yeah. Um.”

“I mean, under the  circumstances that’s not really--”

“Well no…. Jesus. Look at it that way, I’m responsible for  _ that _ too,” Clint grumbled.

“You’re not-- it’s not your--” Coulson said, and then appeared to choke, the open expression on his face going semi-tragic. Clint waved him off and walked out of the room-- to sulk some more, Natasha thought uncharitably. She didn’t bother to examine his expression-- she’d seen it often enough. Coulson’s, though, was shutting back down as rapidly as if it had never been open.

“Oh for the love of--” he grumbled, staring after Clint-- “I didn't mean-- I  _ wouldn’t _ \-- damnit.”

“Mm,” Natasha said, watching him as he glared at the door.  

“Was he always this way?” Coulson asked, clearly fighting to keep his voice on the frustrated side of despair. After a moment, Natasha decided he really was addressing her.

“I would have thought you would know better than I,” she said. Apparently it was the wrong thing to say, because Coulson just stared at her, looking wounded, before randomly grabbing a book and stalking back out the door. 

And that, Natasha thought, was what she got for trying to be candid. She sighed, looked around the tiny room at all their half-unpacked bags, and decided that while neither of them were likely to thank her for touching their clothing, she could at least check and assemble the assortment of weaponry that had been hidden with the socks and unmentionables. 

She’d half-wanted to go out herself, in those pretty new pumps, lurk in the back of one of the shipboard clubs letting the music wash over her-- but that could do for another time. For now, she slipped her earphones back on, spun until she got to Dragonette, and considered the weaponry available to her. Field-stripping always calmed her-- or always used to calm her, or maybe had been programmed to calm her. Natasha stopped midway through disassembling the little plastic gun that had been hidden in a box of tampons. She considered while the music wound into her ear canals, the singer snarling that everything worth it hurt a little bit.

Natasha’s hand hovered over the stop button.

Whether she had always been, or always seemed, or was possibly programmed, into being who she was didn’t matter at the moment. Completing the mission did. And that meant keeping Clint and Coulson from trying to throw each other overboard. The conversation she’d had with Melinda May just before she’d left tumbled over and over again in her brain. They both wanted to reconcile, the conversation regarding Jasper Sitwell convinced her of it. They were both as frustrated with their situation as she was. Could they not know how apologize, how to smooth things over with each other? Did they really not know how to say “I’m sorry”? 

Possibly not. 

Probably not, even-- and no wonder. In Natasha’s experience, reconciliation had always meant concession, supplication (and, often, submission). All these things were easy to fake, but Clint had never been able to do that, and she doubted Coulson could either. If not forgive, they would have to forget, and that sick feeling was starting to creep back into Natasha’s stomach. She knew how to get them to do that. 

They’d already shown how easily they would come together for the common cause of worrying about a friend. Natasha might not be their friend, but she was quite sure she could manipulate them into joining forces to take care of her, if she just played up her own vulnerability. Much as she disliked the idea, if they wouldn’t take steps she would have to, and soon. Because the biggest danger currently was not Labanzov nor his contacts-- it was that Strike Team Delta would crumble before it could complete the mission, victims of of sheer social awkwardness.

When Coulson came back to the room fifteen minutes later to exchange his book for one he had not already finished, Natasha put down her reassembled Glock and made herself look up at him with a little extra wideness in her eyes. 

Coulson stopped mid-grab and blinked back at her.

“You all right?” he asked, sounding a little shocked-- as well he might. It was the first time since they’d become teammates that she’d let herself look less than certain around him.

“This… this stupid  _ boat _ ,” she said, because it wouldn’t do to be too obvious, “that’s all.”

“Ah. That makes two of us-- three of us, probably. I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Thank you,” Natasha said and waited until he was nearly out of the room to sigh. He paused with his hand on the knob.

“Coulson….” 

He turned, clearly trying to look open and non-threatening. Natasha bit her lip, swallowed down her distaste, sent a mental apology winging on its way back to San Diego, and leaned forward.

“It’s… I realize it’s unfair of me to ask, please tell me if I’m out of line, but--” 

He’d gone gray as putty; it nearly stopped her in her tracks. 

“Go on,” he said, his voice thin.

“Is there a reason why Agent Morse would dislike me?” That caught him off-guard, and she followed up her advantage. “I mean, besides the obvious.”

“Do-- did she do something to make you think she did?” Confidence was already seeping back into his tone, even while he tried to keep his face as neutral as possible-- to avoid spooking her, she thought.

“It was an impression only,” Natasha said, “if I could place it, it would probably bother me less.”

“Oh.” Yes, of course he would find that plausible; he tracked down loose ends like they were a personal offense to his universe. “She wasn’t herself, but it wasn’t because of you. She and Clint-- and Barton-- were... involved.“ He cleared his throat. “Anyway, they’re not now. It’s not you.”

“That’s a relief,” Natasha said, trying out a little smile at him. “Unless it’s going to cause trouble later? She seems to be our primary contact now?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, his own smile as strained as hers, “both of them will behave professionally. They… they’re too good to let their past get in the way of the mission.” 

After an awkward silence, he held up his book, smiled apologetically at her, and fled the room.

When they all went to dinner, though, Natasha noticed that he made sure to let Clint have the best corner seat, where he could watch the room for them. It almost depressed her, how easy it was. She willed the prickling on the back of her shoulders to settle, her stomach to unknot, and tried to concentrate on her beef.

This was their dynamic throughout the rest of the cruise, as the three of them watched Labanzov’s bodyguard, eavesdropped on his never-helpful-enough conversations with his superiors, and stewed in their own dissatisfactions. When they finally debarked at Mazatlan, Natasha filled her lungs with sea air and relief. Surely the mission was nearly over and they could go home, and she could stop feeling like she was betraying herself and both of her teammates. Surely it wouldn’t be long now.

It couldn’t be.

\----

There was no way they were all going to survive this epic farce of a mission intact. The longer it went, the more Clint was sure of that. It was one thing to have each other's backs and shoot over each other's shoulders during high speed chases and bug out of Bruges about half an hour in front of not one, not two, but  _ three _ separate governmental factions and at least one apocalyptic cult. As long as they each had something to prove-- namely, I'm not gonna be the one to get us all killed first, goddamnit-- they were fine.

But this? Clint shuddered, and let the dirty water slosh around his feet as he finished showering, wishing he could just stay under the spray until it melted him. Hand them an easy op, all surveillance and no action (yet) and of course they all fell to pieces. He’d nearly jumped off the cruise ship before they made it to Mazatlan, driven batty by being in close quarters with Natasha and Coulson so long. The dingy port they’d landed at had looked to him like heaven, and every street had glittered with sunshine as they’d climbed to their little rented condo in the hills. 

And then the door had closed behind them, they’d realized they had only one bedroom and a second bed on an open, overhanging loft to share between them, and reality had come crashing back down. They were going to have to  _ live _ together. The cruise ship, for all its faults, had at least not required them to negotiate cleaning and cooking and domestic shit that Clint knew had never been his forte. Natasha, at least, knew him well enough to know not to expect much. But he and Coulson had never lived together before-- well. They’d never lived together like this; a week spent mostly naked in bed or rubbing against each other in clubs did not count.

Better still, it had already been nearly a week of this domestic water torture, and if their intel was right the buy they were trying to intercept wasn't gonna happen for at least another week. The only real work was stalking Labanzov’s bodyguard and trying to gather local intelligence. Clint had hoped for split shifts, but as it turned out the bodyguard turned in very early in the evenings, and there was little to do but listen to him snore over any of the three bugs they’d placed in his hotel room. Meanwhile they were stuck with janky-ass AC and slow drains, and Clint wasn't sure they were all gonna make it out alive. 

It could have been worse, Clint decided as he attempted to dry himself off despite the humidity. After all, their stateroom on the ship could have been below the waterline, forcing him to share a bed with Coulson for the entire eleven days. Instead, Clint had made a habit of accidentally-on-purpose falling asleep in the deck chair on their tiny balcony, the only place where the slab-sided oceangoing monstrosity managed to sway a little like a real ship. 

After that, it’d felt practically homey the first night Clint had settled down to sleep in the hammock that occupied a corner of the flat roof of their condo. That night, staring up at the stars and the lights of the city below them, Clint had thought he could maybe manage to get through this op without killing either himself or one of the other two members of his team, both of whom had taken to looking at him with oddly hurt eyes whenever they thought he wasn't paying attention. 

The phantom woundedness in his peripheral vision was worse than any of the previous icing-out had been, and reminded him far too much of Bobbi. Moreover, he wasn’t sure what the hell he’d done to deserve it-- okay, what the hell  _ new _ he’d done to deserve it. He also knew he didn’t know how to fix it. His attempts at fixing those looks when Bobbi had been the one giving them had nearly resulted in a disastrous move to California, so Clint figured anything he did come up with was probably exactly the wrong idea.

He’d bedded down the fifth night with relief, happy to finally be free of those side-long reproachful stares and under the open sky.

At least until the rain hit.

And then the bugs.

At that point, he’d given up and went inside to wash the local insects from his crevices.

As he pulled on his blue plaid pajama pants-- which he’d never expected to see again, given they’d made the ill-fated cross-country trip with Bobbi a few months back-- he tried to decide whether a shirt would just plaster itself to his already-reheating chest if he put it on. Then thought about what Natasha and Coulson would say-- would glare-- to him if he didn’t.

His sleeping options were bad and worse. Natasha’s bed was clearly right out. The decor in the living room ran less to couches and more to large armchairs with under-padded cushions that revealed all the charming and authentic wooden ribs beneath. He was just going to have to bunk in with Coulson; the other option was not getting any sleep at all. Even if this damned mission was currently deadly boring they couldn’t afford him zombie-walking through it.

Clint thought about what sleeping with Coulson tonight was going to be like, curled up to the side of the double bed that pressed up against the loft railing. Thought about sleeping with Coulson tonight while  _ not _ wearing a t-shirt.

No, Clint decided as he pulled the thin jersey over his head, he was  _ not _ going to survive this stupid mission.

\----

Phil woke up to find that the map he'd fallen asleep over had stuck to his cheek, glued there most likely by a combination of sweat and drool. He cleared his throat and pawed it off his face, profoundly glad no one was there to witness the indignity. 

“Hard night?” Romanoff asked, and he looked up to find her sitting backwards on a barstool,  watching him. 

“Not at all,” he lied. 

Barton had slunk in off the roof sometime in the early hours, waking Phil from uneasy dreams. He nearly turned over and asked Barton what the hell he thought he was doing-- until the sound of a wet towel hitting the floor deterred him. Phil had felt it safer not to open his eyes; feigned sleep was surely the better part of valor. He stayed stubbornly still as Barton poked him on the knee and whispered his name, then sighed and muttered something uncomplimentary. Maybe Barton would just go away and leave him alone to grump into his pillow until sleep ambushed him again. 

It turned out to be a tactical error on Phil's part. 

After getting no response, Barton had snapped “fine, we'll do it the hard way” and moved off… and then Phil had felt the foot of the bed dip. The mattress creaked as Barton put one knee, then the other, on it. He’d crawled forward, bouncing the mattress--and Phil-- as he came. When he reached pillow-height, he’d wiggled himself in between the rail and Phil, burrowing and tugging at the covers until he'd managed to slip underneath. Once situated, he’d rolled over, tucking up his knees so that his ass nestled against Phil's hip, and let out a sigh, long and distressingly close to a whimper at the end. 

Then he fell asleep, all six soggy, hot feet of him, as easily as if sharing a small mattress on a humid night was his favorite way to rest. To say Phil slept at all the rest of the night would be far too generous. He drifted vaguely in and out of consciousness, never dipping past dreams into true sleep. 

Which explained why Phil was currently so off his game the Black Widow could catch him snoozing on the intel packets.

At this rate, one of them was not going to survive this mission.  

He shuffled the maps back into a pile and stuffed them in the briefing packet.

“What’s going on?” he asked her, while trying to discreetly swipe drool off the top of a half-inch slump of transcripts from the bodyguard’s phone. Guy was chatty.

“I heard from Morse,” Romanoff said, handing him a tissue and looking away while he blotted. Phil tried not to resent her for it. “Labanzov’s not on the next ship after all.”

“ _ What _ ,” Phil felt himself growl, soggy intel forgotten. “All this time-- all this time they’ve had us stuck here, haven’t let us move, because he was going to come to us, we just needed to wait, just watch the stooge and get ready, and they  _ lost _ him?” 

All the too-early mornings spent shadowing the bodyguard on his morning runs, the midday huddles around their one secured laptop with everyone’s shoulders far too close, the clogged up drains, the humidity, the mosquitoes that found their way through every crack in screens and clothing, the awkward silences-- not to mention the soggy Barton invading his bed-- 

“I don’t disagree,” Romanoff sighed, looking at him with sympathy and tidying all his now-clean papers into a neat pile. “They assure me he is on  _ a _ ship, they’re quite sure of that. And he’s coming here-- Tularev is no decoy. Just… not on  _ that _ ship.”

As she talked, she moved around him, pushing the papers back into folders and taking his coffee cup.

“It’s like we’re waiting for--” Phil broke off, frowning, and watched Romanoff as she refilled his cup from the french press and set it in front of him. 

He stared at the coffee cup, then back up at her. 

“Coulson?” she asked, looking bland as milk.

He looked at the coffee cup again. 

Oh, he was an  _ idiot. _

“Are you… are you…  _ mothering _ me?” he asked finally.

“Of course not,” she replied, whipping her hand away from the handle. “I would never presume.”

Phil realized he was glaring at the cup far more than it deserved, but he couldn’t stop himself. 

“Have you…” he stopped, then shook his head. He was nearly sure she  _ had _ been smoothing his path. Their paths, even. Unpacking their weapons for them. Taking the worst shifts following Tularev. Making breakfasts and…and making them think she was more fragile than she was. He looked up finally.

There was hurt riding in her eyes, yes, but underneath it there were nerves.

“I suppose I was naive to think you were actually opening up,” he sighed finally. 

“I--” Romanoff let her hands flutter by her sides, and Phil felt sick all over again because he realized he had no idea if it was genuine. Barton might have known-- she hadn’t spent half so much time doing this to  _ him _ . 

But then no, it would just put Barton’s hackles up. So if she wanted to play on anyone’s sympathy, it would have to be his, only he could not for the life of him figure out why she’d picked  _ now _ to start tugging his heartstrings.

It wasn’t the mission; if she’d wanted to double-cross them she could have made sure they didn’t get on the cruise ship. 

“Are we… are we that bad?” Phil asked, because if it wasn’t the mission it must be her teammates. And now that he knew what she’d been doing, he thought he could see it the effect it’d had, drawing off the worst of the awkwardness between him and Clint whenever it got near to exploding, turning it into concern over her. 

Romanoff nodded, seeming more than a little unhappy at the admission.

“I’m sorry,” Phil said, meaning it sincerely. “But it’s not at you. We certainly don’t mean it to be at you. It’s just… it’s not your fault, all right? And… not your business.”

Which, oh god, if Barton realized she’d been manipulating them, was only going to make life between all of them worse. 

“How is it not my business?” Romanoff asked finally, her voice enviably even. “There are three of us on this team. We may not trust each other, we may not even  _ like _ each other, but we do need to function in the field.”

“We are! We  _ have _ been,” Phil cried. That at least had been working well between them-- too well, in lots of ways; it was too damn easy to fall into and falling back out of it when the mission wrapped and Barton stopped talking to him hurt. 

“We’re in the field now, Coulson! We’ve been in the field since we got to Vancouver, and no, you and Clint are  _ not _ functioning well. Look at you-- look at him. When he left to tail Tularev while you were… were…  _ analyzing intelligence _ here he looked like he was half dead. And this is with me  _ helping _ . Tell me, do you expect us to function  _ just fine _ until we fall apart?”

Phil bit his lip. 

“No,” he said. “But I do expect my teammates not to try to  _ manage _ me-- and so does Barton, you know that well enough.”

“Then manage yourselves!”

“Maybe we could if we were given a chance to,” Phil snapped, and could see her winding up to say something he knew they’d both regret. “I’m sorry,” he forestalled her. 

She rolled her eyes at him. 

He found himself laughing almost against his will.

“I deserved that,” he told her, “I know. Probably we both do. Look, Romanoff, please-- I know Barton and I are… are… dysfunctional right now, but you don’t have to feel the need to join us just to fit in. It would…” he paused, trying to find a way to put words to the sour feeling in his gut… “it wouldn’t be fair of us to ask, or expect. You don’t deserve to come to SHIELD just to have to please yet another set of pig-headed men. I don’t… I had hoped you’d trusted us more than that. Or trusted Nick.”

Romanoff was staring at him now, mouth open just a little, and Phil hoped he was making some kind of coherent sense. It seemed imperative, even in his addled state, that he manage to make this clear. That the last thing he wanted was to see another Dottie Underwood, not a… whoever Natasha Romanoff might become with her second chance.

“I’m sorry that we’ve failed you so far.”

“You,” Romanoff said, then had to clear her throat before she continued, “are crazy. I assume this is why Director Fury likes you.”

“It’s a major feature, yes,” Phil admitted.

“Fine,” Romanoff sniffed, “fine. You fix this. You, Clint-- get it under control, since it seems you won’t let me. If you don’t…” she shrugged and walked out, leaving Phil to his thoughts.

They mostly ran along the lines of  _ Coulson you idiot _ . He couldn’t think of a way he wasn’t going to fail her, yet again.

\----

As it happened, Phil barely had a chance to begin trying to  _ fix it _ , for whatever value of  _ fix _ Barton was even going to allow, for the next couple of days. Barton had come back from tailing Tularev to tell them that the warehouse they’d thought was holding the meeting was a decoy, a dummy-- nothing in it but a crate full of jury-rigged Kalashnikovs and a couple sacks of harpoons, which Tularev had been carefully dragging into tempting arrangements. 

Not only was their mark not coming on the right ship, they had no idea when he was coming or where he was going to be when he finally arrived. And yet, in call after frantic call, SHIELD assured them that he  _ would _ be there, all the intel said so, he’d called a colleague in Kiev and described his seasickness in detail, they were sure he was on a ship. Yes, a ship in the Pacific. Yes, headed for them. Just hang on.

They’d all three of them been going for twenty hours straight, in the middle of a heatwave, trying to pin down Tularev’s next move. It had been Romanoff who finally found him at the port, Barton who managed to get in position to see the number he dialed, and Phil who’d sent the intel off to SHIELD to find a way to tap whoever was on the other line.

Back at the condo, exhausted and drenched in sweat, Barton had taken the first shift in the shower then come out to drape himself over the nearest semi-horizontal surface. It was not at all messing with Phil’s equanimity. He sighed, watching Barton lean over the counter and waggle his ass slowly back and forth as he studied the port’s schematics. 

Romanoff had been in the bathroom for over an hour. An  _ hour _ . If she was trying to give him and Barton time to talk, it wasn’t going to work.

Phil went to find a magazine, so he could ignore Barton just as deliberately as he was being ignored.  _ Car and Driver _ ’s list of 20 best economy cars for families seemed like a treat, really, compared to the alternatives. It worked spectacularly for all of five minutes, and then a door slammed open upstairs.

"Barton. Coulson. Both of you. Come here  _ now, _ " Romanoff snapped.

Phil jerked his head up from his magazine at the tone of her voice. She was wearing one of the safehouse's large magenta towels wrapped around her midsection and her hair was up in a... in a.... Phil squinted. In a kind of t-shirt thing. And she was shaking a shampoo bottle. None of it boded well for him. Suppose she’d decided to take matters into her own hands?

He glanced back down at his magazine, wondering if he could get away with playing deaf. But Barton was moving, if ungraciously, unfolding himself from his drape over the counter and shuffling over. Phil tossed his magazine down, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and followed tamely after, slumping to the opposite side of the bathroom doorframe as Clint had.

"This," Romanoff said, pointing at two rather sodden clumps of... of something... in the trash can. "This stops now."

"Natasha, what the fuck?" Barton asked, or rather whined.

"That was my question," she told him, and then pointed to the shower. "Gentlemen, what do you see?" she asked. Phil glanced at her, sighed, and glanced at the shower. He saw a dirty ring, was what he saw, but even if there'd been any kind of provisions for bathroom maintenance in the condo, he was damned if he was going to get down on his knees and scrub anywhere Barton could come in and see him, and... wait.

He looked back at Romanoff, who was definitely freshly showered, and then at the shower itself.

"Huh." he said.

"Exactly," she told him, glaring.

"What?" Barton asked. "What do I see?"

"What you do-- or rather don't-- see is standing water," Romanoff hissed. "Do you know  _ why _ you don't see standing water, gentlemen?" 

The two of them looked at each other, then her-- and then Phil looked back at Barton quickly as he realized it was the first time in, since, well Budapest really, that Barton had met his glance willingly. Barton was back to frowning at Romanoff.

"You don't see standing water because I removed approximately a-- what does your Agent Sitwell call it, oh yes-- a metric fuckton of your hair from the drain.  _ That _ hair." She pointed back to the mess in the trashcan.

Phil found he had absolutely nothing to say in the face of the sort of moral authority she was radiating-- or perhaps in the face of the magenta bath sheet dwarfing her. 

"What I can't figure out," she was saying as she went on, "is why I'm always the only one cleaning the drain out, when I somehow manage not to clog it with my  _ fur _ even though my hair is longer than both yours put together."

Barton winced, and Phil had the distinct impression that he'd just been glanced at while his gaze was elsewhere. 

"Natasha--" Barton started, and got a growl for his trouble.

"No, Clint. No. I get it, you don't like me and don't trust me and in fact resent me greatly; this is clear. Could this be clear  _ without _ you leaving filth in our only bathroom? Moreover, if you are so determined to protect me from a distance whether I want you to or not, please do so by cleaning up after yourself, instead of terrifying anyone who happens to look at me funny when you think I'm not watching. A clean shower would, at least, be useful."

And now Barton really  _ was _ checking to see whether Phil was watching him; Phil could feel the gaze on the side of his face. It was something to consider later, what Romanoff meant by protecting her from a distance. At the moment, he was more concerned with his own exit strategy from the current situation, which Barton was escalating.

"I'm so fucking sorry I can't do anything right for you," he was spitting, "it wasn't my choice to be on this damn team anyway, imposing on you. I don't remember being the one to invite you in, and I don't give a fuck that you're at SHIELD but I don't have to like having you in my life again judging me and treating me like I’m your own special burden. You’re so much better than me, I know it, okay? You can stop rubbing it in. I keep waiting for you to just leave everything in the fucking dust again anyway as soon as you don’t like the way things are going, so why don’t you just do it now? Why don't you just fucking take a  _ hike _ , Natasha?"

" _ Barton," _ Phil snapped, and got growled at for his trouble. "That isn’t helping. I know we’re under stress, but Agent Romanoff--"

"Agent Romanoff is sick of your shit too, Agent Coulson," Romanoff snapped. "Don't put me any more in the middle of this than you already have. I'm not going to break if dropped, I don't need people stepping around me like an unexploded shell. If you won’t let me take care of your problems for you, and you don’t have the guts to do it yourself, I would at least like some common courtesy and for you to  _ stop leaving your chest hair around like frosting sprinkles." _

Even through the pounding in his ears, Phil heard Barton choke on that one. 

"And now, gentlemen," Romanoff said, putting down her shampoo bottle, "I believe I'm going to do as Agent Barton suggested and take a short  _ hike _ , before I end up showing you how many ways I can kill a man with a bath poof."

And she stalked out of the bathroom, pushing between the two of them and leaving Phil and Barton facing each other, neither capable of looking the other in the eye.

Again.

\----

As Natasha walked down the beach, espadrilles in hand, trying to decide how she felt about the soft sand between her toes, she wondered what it said about her that she had found her explosion in their condominium so satisfying. Possibly nothing good, another outgrowth of the Red Room, a sign that her tastes had all been channeled towards hurting others. But then, Coulson had-- as near as she could tell-- been so concerned with not hurting Clint’s feelings, or hers, or possibly his own, this whole time that he’d ended up hurting everyone worse.

So perhaps a little liking for confrontation was a forgivable thing.

She had enjoyed far more than she should the thrill of righteous anger in her gut as she had stalked out of their quarters,  _ determined _ to enjoy herself. It had lasted her all the way down to the Av. Camaron Sabalo, before she had realized she had come out without the better half of her weapons and in the wrong shoes. A little fury, she thought, went a long way. Best enjoy it in  moderation.

So she had gone shoe shopping. After copious experimentation, she had decided she was neutral on the whole affair. Shoes were good-- wonderful things, when done right, fun to put on and off, to flex her calves and decorate her ankles-- but the shopping itself was only the means to a shoe-rich end.

After running that to the ground, she had, in rapid succession, decided she liked mango stands, profoundly disliked Señor Frogs, liked street cart empanadas, and then very much liked the idea of face packs and aromatherapy and hot stone massages.

In reality, sadly, she could not relax enough to truly enjoy any of them. The masseuse poked her shoulders in mute recrimination each time a curtain would flutter and she would tense. The face pack was no better; she couldn’t keep her eyes closed for fear of ambush. Other people in the spa, she saw, had brought friends. It was a good plan; they could watch each other’s backs or, in the case of the cucumbers on their eyes, at least when one was attacked it would give the other time to get away.

But Natasha had no friends-- no friends present. At SHIELD, of course, she had Melinda May, but doubted that May would have been able to relax either. Bobbi Morse, she would probably have enjoyed cucumber eyes, but even had she magically been present, Natasha could hardly have trusted her so soon. What she needed was someone like Agent Sitwell had been to Clint and to Coulson.

As Natasha stood, toes sinking into the sand, it occurred to her to wonder why she had never wondered before if friends would be worthwhile. 

It was a good thing that the Red Room trainers were all either dead or locked up somewhere deep in the bowels of one of SHIELD’s prisons, because nothing in the world would have cured her of the righteous fury she felt at that moment. In the absence of an object it cooled far too quickly, and left her all alone and shoeless on the beach, staring blankly into the distance.

She could not make friends at that moment, was not entirely sure she knew how to do so on her own. However-- she did have someone she could, odd as it seemed, trust to watch her back. Two someones even. 

And of the two of them, she suspected that she could bully Clint into coming with her to watch her back while she obtained a pedicure. He would likely not snark in public-- except possibly in his pidgin Russian-- and he would not let her be harmed. 

Coulson would probably do in a pinch, but she would have to play on his sense of guilt to get him to come, and she had said she would attempt to stop doing that. With Clint, all she had to do was provide an alternative to being stuck alone in a room with Coulson. That, she could do.

\---

They probably stood in that dingy, humid little bathroom, staring straight ahead and avoiding each other’s eyes, for no more than five minutes. Clint’s gut was usually as accurate as a clock, but here it failed him. He couldn’t tell how much time passed with no other sounds than the traffic in the street below, the shift of Coulson’s stocking feet, and the slow tap of realization finally boring its way through Clint’s own thick skull.

_ We can’t go on like this another minute. _

Not, at any rate, and be a team-- and Clint had been around the block long enough to admit that Strike Team Delta wasn’t just a good team, it was fucking incredible. It had the potential to be everything Fury wanted from it-- a game changer, the ace up his sleeve, the devil in the details.  

Worse yet, Clint already realized that he would do just about  _ anything _ to stay on it. Between Coulson’s strategic planning, Natasha’s subtle ruthlessness, and Clint’s ability to pull miracles out of his ass, everything they did in the field built on each other. Clint knew without a doubt he was performing at a higher level than ever before in his life, even when he and Jasper were off careening through small villages with prejudice and a blaring pipe organ. (And a large truck. They weren’t hauling an organ in anything smaller than a semi.) 

The missions were getting addictive-- and so was Fury’s satisfaction. (It also, Clint’s brain reminded him maliciously, was the best opportunity he was ever gonna get to prove himself to Coulson and to SHIELD in general.)

Clint glanced over at Coulson, who was staring off into a corner of the shower, looking drained and exhausted, and wondered if he felt the same way. If he saw the team as a terrible privilege, or just another whim of Fury’s. 

He needed to care about Strike Team Delta;  _ Clint _ needed him to care. They couldn’t afford to lose this.

As if he had noticed Clint staring, Coulson sighed, letting his shoulders slump. Clint braced himself, waiting on whatever was going to follow that sigh-- more yelling? Had Coulson noticed how much of a hypocrite Clint’d become, stalking Natasha like Coulson’d smoothed the way for him? 

Slowly, Coulson took a step towards Clint, looking down at the floor. Then, after a moment of hesitation, another. He came straight up to Clint, still not watching him-- and then reached past him, to the cupboard under the sink. After a moment’s rummage, he came out with borax and a sponge.

And, as Clint watched him in the stillness, Coulson dropped to his knees and began to clear the shampoo and soap out of the shower.

\----

There hadn’t been much in the way of cleaning supplies in the condo, but Barton had at least dug up a bottle of Fabuloso and a sponge from the kitchen. While the shower now smelled luxuriously of lavender, it hadn’t done much for the mildew stuck in the cracks of the grout. Both of them had stared forlornly at the shower for a long while, before giving in to their fates and getting back to work. 

A half hour after Romanoff’s exit, they still hadn’t said a word to each other, and Phil tried to keep his mind on his task rather than the silence. He was so busy scraping mildew off the grout that he missed it for a moment when Barton sat back against the shower wall, put his arms on his knees, and his chin on his arms. He did, however, notice when Barton gave a gusty sigh, and he struggled not to snap that there was still plenty of tile to clean. Of the two of them, Barton had been bitten far harder by Romanoff; he deserved a chance to sulk.

“I’m really sorry,” Barton said softly, “for being an asshole about… um…. About everything, I guess.”

Phil sat back on his haunches and risked a glance over to find Barton looking pensive and damp, his face flushed and hair disarranged from all the cleaning in close quarters. It brought back unfortunate memories. 

“You practicing for Romanoff?” he asked, more sharply than he had intended.

Barton gave him a wounded look.

“C’mon, Coulson,” he said, like Phil ought to damn well know what he was talking about. Phil blinked. Despite the reproach in his voice, Barton looked nervous. 

“Was that-- are you apologizing to  _ me _ ?” Phil asked before he could stop himself, and then grabbed one hand with the other to keep from slapping his forehead. And he supposedly worked for an intelligence agency. Smooth, Coulson. “I mean-- why? You… what for?”

“What  _ for _ ?” Barton put down the toothbrush he’d been using to detail the grout in favor of running his hands through his hair. “What kind of-- you know what for! For the entire um,” he spiraled a hand, “last three months, I guess. Do you want me to go into detail… oh. Is this, uh, is this a test?”

“A test?” Phil felt himself leaning forward, in spite of himself, feeling all the knots that had built up in his back and neck through the last three months tighten up. Through the confusion, he had a vague idea he was about to hurt. 

The thought was surprisingly welcome-- the tension had nearly become unbearable. Any kind of release, no matter how painful, sounded worthwhile.

“Look, I’m not good at the whole ‘what lesson am I supposed to’ve learned’ guessing game,” Barton said, looking frustrated. “I just… I do better with, um, direction.”

“I… would give you some if I could,” Phil told him.

He got an airless, mirthless laugh in return.

“Yeah, yeah. I know I’m supposed to figure it out myself. Okay.” Barton exhaled and began again, looking up at Phil with wide eyes. “I’m sorry for… for what I said when we… when we um, fought while I was in medical, okay? I… I get it now. Since Natasha joined up. Since we’re supposed to be a team.”

“Get what?” Phil asked, trying hard to find a foothold in the conversation. He had at least realized that Barton thought Phil was the kind of asshole who’d make you guess what you did wrong. Badly as he wanted to set Barton straight, he was even more afraid to stop the confession mid-stream. Barton might never get started again, and it seemed a lot more important for Barton to get it out than for Phil to preserve his own ego.

“I resent her so bad for being here, for me being stuck with her,” Barton said, “but I can’t… I can’t hope she fails or goes away because somehow it’d be worse if she sucked, right? Like, then she’d be hurting and I couldn’t resent her. So if I could, I’d probably do what you did with me. I wouldn’t say anything, I wouldn’t want to be near her just… I mean she’s right, I’d still be pulling this creepy-ass stalker shit I’m pulling with her just ‘cause not wanting to be around her doesn't mean I want her hurt.

“So. I mean I get it. You don’t want me to fail but that doesn’t mean you wanted me here-- I mean, here on a team with you. I’m guessing you don’t want me in this shower with you either, but man I don’t want to die at Natasha’s hands right now so we’re just gonna have to deal. Okay?”

“Okay,” Phil agreed, because Barton seemed so concerned-- and then stopped himself with a shake. “No, I mean-- not okay.”

“Is it that bad, really?” Barton asked, and started to get up. “I can-- if you leave the tile for me, I can just--” 

Phil realized his hand was on Barton’s thigh, pressing him back down to the floor, only after it had mostly happened.

“I’m not-- that’s not what-- stay.” He patted the thigh to make sure Barton got the point, once, twice-- three times was probably pushing it, but somehow his hand wouldn’t obey him.

“Coulson?” Barton asked again. 

He was tense under Phil’s palm, and for a brief moment Phil thought it was due to the contact-- before realizing Barton was sitting on his heels. It was just balance, of course it was. 

Phil dropped his hand and tried to clear his brain. Was this what it felt like to be near a levee when it broke? Off his feet, going under, and with absolutely no idea what direction he was headed in?

He supposed Barton would know, if he asked.

Oh, god, what a horrible thought. Phil caught at the one bit in the torrent of words that had hit him hardest.

“Why would you think I didn’t want you here?” Phil asked, because that was so far from the truth it kinda came around and bit him on the backside.

“Oh come on, Coulson. I’m not dumb. Can’t be fun having the guy you got your rocks off with on leave years ago suddenly be on your team. I’m not…” Barton paused, rubbing his hand down his face like it could draw the words directly out of his brain. 

Phil realized he hadn’t inhaled in an awfully long time, and he was going to need air if he wanted to interrupt. The delay to breathe was fatal; Barton started back up before Phil could stop him.

“I know I wasn’t much of a catch for SHIELD,” Barton said, looking anywhere now but at Phil. “I was a fucking head case when we met and… well and after, for a long time. It’s… you always were… Jas said you sent him to recruit me and that’s… typical you, isn’t it? You wanted to give me a chance at something nice and I threw it back in your face because… well mostly because I felt like a shithead for not recognizing you from day one. But I know you had a rep to uphold and a ton of important work to do and you’d nearly… look, you said… it’s not…. It’s not easy to come back from putting a gun in your mouth and why the hell would you want some reminder of your past messing that up. And I mean maybe… maybe that was why all the special treatment? Like, overcompensation? I don’t know.”

“Jesus, Clint--” Clearly, removing his hand had been a bad idea. Phil put it right back, curling around Barton’s-- around  _ Clint’s-- _ wrist. 

Clint looked down at it like he’d never seen a human appendage before.

“You don’t--” Phil stopped in the middle of the sentence, appalled at what he was about to do. Some dim part of his hindbrain was screaming he could still save the situation. There were plenty of ways to say  _ I didn’t resent you, I was proud of you, I didn’t want to crowd your space, _ without getting into the gory details. “Of course I wanted you at SHIELD. I went looking for you, Clint. And when you finally crossed our radar after Hackensack I spent months trying to convince Nick to bring you in. Are you crazy?”

Or, he could say that, apparently.

Clint was flat-out gaping at him now, wide as a fish and nearly as wet from sweat and the dripping shower head.

“Uh?” Clint said, and Phil bit back a curse. Yeah, that wasn’t the kind of thing you could say and not end up answering uncomfortable questions. No way but forward now.

“Why?” he prompted. 

Clint nodded. “Why.” 

Phil sighed. He didn’t think Clint, in this mood, was going to understand if he said  _ because you were good. Because you were  _ more _ than good, you were amazing, and you deserved an organization that was going to stand behind you, not put a knife in your back. Because you leapt off a building for me and that’s seared in my brain-- and I think your tongue might be seared into my-- _ no.

No, they were not going there. Tongues just didn’t enter into it at all. 

“Because you said no, in the taqueria, just before you left,” Phil tried. “And I guess I’m too stubborn to take no for an answer. But more than that, because my job was to bring people to SHIELD who could transform it-- and I knew you could.”

“Oh.” Clint blinked as he said it, then dropped flat on the shower floor, legs splaying out. Phil tried to pretend he didn’t mind the loss of contact. “So-- I-- but.” He looked up, brow wrinkling. “But couldn’t you just fucking say that, instead of hiding behind Jas all the time? Why avoid me? Was that because of Miami, too?”

“Kind of,” Phil sighed, leaning back against the shower wall and feeling the world reel around him. He picked his sponge back up for the sake of having something other than Clint to fondle. “I don’t like… I didn’t want to burden you.”

“Huh. I’m not sure what hang-ups you have, Coulson, but a week of good sex with a hot soldier and a clean place to sleep wasn’t exactly a burden, at least to me.” He said it with so much bitterness that Phil almost wanted to call him a liar.

Except it was more likely the bitterness was directed at the idea he was a burden to Phil. What had Clint called himself, during their fight at the hospital and again here? A “fucking head case?” What a desecration. If that was really how he thought Phil thought of Chris-- of Miami-- of himself-- Phil could not let it stand.

“It wasn’t the sex, the sex was fine, the sex was great.” Phil assured him, and seriously his mouth needed to just stop. That wasn’t the point he was trying to make-- was it? “I remember it...”  _ Fondly. In daydreams. Way too often over the intervening years _ and shut  _ up _ Phil. “... That was never a burden to remember.”

“What the hell did you think was gonna be such a burden to me then?”

There were still only two answers to that, the way there had been in Fury’s office, and Phil briefly considered giving the first one. Saying “Me. My regard. You didn’t deserve me hovering around you like that when you were trying to start over, like I expected you to reciprocate-- or care.” 

But to say so would be to do it-- which wouldn’t be fair. That was why Phil’s breath stopped at the thought, of course,  _ not _ cowardice. Because a coward wouldn’t have gone on and pulled out option two.

“It wasn’t Miami, it was the massacre,” he said.

Clint turned slowly, oh so slowly, to stare at him, and Phil fought back a cringe.

After all, Fury’d been grumbling at him to just spill the beans already for months. Now that he was about to do it, Phil realized he was less sorry for himself than for the pain he was about to cause Clint.

\----

“I don’t remember any massacre,” Clint said, or thought he said. He’d been speaking kind of at random ever since Coulson had put a hand on his thigh, and now he’d apparently lost his grip on English entirely. “Pretty sure we left almost everybody alive.”

A sudden misunderstanding of his native language was the only way Clint could make sense of Coulson seeming to say he’d  _ gone looking for Clint _ . It was either that or accept that apparently Coulson was so stubborn he’d been determined to win that argument in the taqueria three years later, if he had to. 

But even by the crazy down-the-rabbit-hole standards this conversation had taken on, what Coulson’d just said made no sense. 

“We did,” Coulson said.

After a moment, Clint realized that was the end of the sentence, and that Coulson was looking at his sponge like maybe swallowing it was a better idea than continuing. Which probably meant that whatever “the massacre” referred to, it’d be far better for Clint's well-being if he remained blissfully ignorant, like Coulson’d wanted. 

“Then what the fuck, Coulson?” he asked, because apparently when Coulson was around he just flung himself off high places willy-nilly and waited for the nice comfortable splat. “What are you talking about?”

Coulson sighed, and turned his hands over.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Well too fucking late now,” Clint said, feeling his voice go tight, “you can’t drop a casual mention of a massacre into a conversation and then just walk away. Not like  _ that _ . Is it something I did? Something  _ you _ did? Something that got done-- what?”

“All of the above, and then some,” Coulson admitted, then bit his lip. “Clint, you don’t want to know. It’s not… it’s old history.” 

His hands, Clint noticed idly, were starting to shake. Clint put his toothbrush down and carefully knelt in front of Coulson, placing one hand on his knee. 

“Coulson? Look, you may as well spill. At this point I think we’re gonna be a mess no matter what, okay?” Coulson huffed this sad, tiny laugh, and Clint pressed his advantage. “Look, I’m just gonna imagine the worst if you don’t say anything, like… like I managed to somehow cause a massacre without knowing it.”

Coulson winced, and Clint froze, realizing far too late he should have just run, should have changed the subject, anything to prevent hearing--

“You kind of did, Clint,” Coulson said miserably, and slumped in defeat.

“What did I do?” Clint whispered, sitting back hard. Coulson was looking anywhere but at him, gone pale as the tile, like he was a chameleon trying to make himself invisible.

For a horrible moment, Clint thought Coulson just wasn’t gonna answer, was gonna leave him to wonder. 

It wasn’t like it wasn’t  _ possible _ , unfortunately. Young Dumb Merc Clint, too fresh from the box even to have started using something as sensible as a code name, had done his share of careless shit. Enough that Clint already had nightmares of what might have been: grief-stricken families he didn’t know about, chaos theory stuff where he flapped his wings and someone died and over in China an entire village got slaughtered.

But he’d thought that was just his own paranoia. Now he was faced with the possibility of sifting through all that shit again, endlessly.

Then Coulson exhaled, and on the exhale he said:

“Wasn’t just you.” His face scrunched up like he’d bit a lemon as he continued. “It was a joint fuck up, let me tell you. You, me, and Archstone.”

“Miami, then,” Clint rasped. “One of the people I killed.” Well at least that narrowed it right the fuck down. “Which one? Rojas, or the other one-- what was he? Farouk?”

“You remembered their names.” Coulson made it a statement, an  _ of course you did _ , for which Clint felt a stupid little prickle of pride. “What else did you know about them?”

“Practically fucking nothing,” Clint admitted. “I was young and stupid, remember? Juan Antonio Rojas was a local drug runner, Farouk Ali smuggled opium. Archstone wanted them both gone. I watched ‘em both long enough to agree that they weren’t exactly model citizens, but that was it.”

“It’s not ‘nothing,’” Coulson told him, looking up long enough for Clint to see a shadow of warmth in his eyes. “Here’s what you didn’t know-- and don’t blame yourself, ‘cause even Nick Fury didn’t know it: Farouk Ali was actually Ghulman Farouq, and his nephew was a man called Manshour Abdul Rauf. Now Abdul Rauf,  _ he _ was a local thug in Afghanistan. His people grew opium in the hills and his uncle smuggled it out country. And we… we turned a blind eye because Abdul Rauf was one of  _ our _ local thugs. He cooperated with the Army when we stationed a base in his territory.”

“That’s… that’s how you got captured in Miami,” Clint said. He supposed he could have known that years ago, if he’d only asked Phillip to clarify instead of yelling at him in the dingy little taqueria they'd fled to in the aftermath of the assassination. “You knew Farouk. That’s how you knew Archstone hired me.”

“That part was a guess,” Coulson told him. “Archstone contractors ran part of our base-- the KP and store and shit-- and provided some extra security. They’d been having… problems… with Abdul Rauf. Supplies kept disappearing. Minor shit, or so I thought at the time.”

His language, Clint noticed idly, was starting to regain the profanity Phillip had occasionally salted casual conversation with. It made sense, in a way, but it made the whole conversation even more surreal to Clint.

“Was that why you were in Miami?” he asked, “Following Farouk?” He’d thought-- Phillip had led him to believe-- that he’d ended up in Miami largely by luck and a lack of anyplace better to be. Two lonely people drifting through, ships crashing in the night. The thought that Phillip had been lying to him--

“No,” Coulson said, and Clint let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. “No, it was a complete fucking coincidence that I saw Farouk there at all. Once I did,” he shrugged. “You know everything that happened next.”

“Except I don’t,” Clint pressed. “Because that was a fairly clean assignment, except for the soldier who wandered into the middle of it and needed his ass rescued. But now you’re telling me I caused a lot more deaths than I thought.”

“‘Caused’ is perhaps… a strong word. You didn’t know who Farouk was-- you couldn’t know. Archstone now…” Coulson shook his head. “Well, and me. I should have-- but I was a little distracted, I think, when I went back. And it seemed so quiet. We’d spent a lot of time in hostile territory. Always keyed up, always looking out. Never knew what car held a bomb, never knew what turn of the path was mined, never knew what intel was important. After that, our new base seemed like… paradise. The locals were mostly friendly. They let us visit, talked to us when bad shit happened instead of hiding it or blaming us. 

“We got to know families, you know? And I didn’t… I let my guard down too far when I got back from Miami. It was near the end of our deployment and we were in a quiet backwater town. Most of the intel we were getting was scraps, stuff useful halfway across the country, not there. And I knew who Farouk was, and I knew Archstone had him killed off-- but I didn’t tell anyone. I didn't share the intel. Clint--” 

There was pleading in his eyes when he looked up.

“I’m taking it Archstone didn’t share that intel either,” Clint said. 

“If all I have to comfort myself with is that I wasn’t worse than  _ Archstone _ \--” Coulson snorted. “But it is. Weeks passed and Manshour was mostly quiet. Didn’t see much different. He held a big funeral for his uncle, but otherwise… not much changed. In the village, one of the headmen did say Manshour’d gotten rough with his son and his son’s family. But that was… not that out of the ordinary.

“And then he started withdrawing suddenly, and our CO said he’d go find out why. He came back worried, said Manshour seemed shifty. We started combing intel, found he’d been sending fighters down south of us, raiding villages down there. So we took a squad, went out to try and intercept the next set of troops. Had a skirmish, nothing major. Drove them off with a couple killed, had one casualty ourselves and some cuts and bruises. Came back and--”

“... and found a massacre?” Clint asked, around the vomit attempting to choke him. He swallowed hard. Coulson wasn’t looking at him anymore, wasn’t looking anywhere except off to the left, staring through the tile more than at it. 

“We were on a Black Hawk, coming back over the mountains, when we saw the smoke plumes in the distance. We found out later that Manshour had exploded a car bomb right in the center of the village, outside the headman’s house. There were… there was a little clinic, in the village. It was right there, too. Our base was just out of town-- helipad, barracks, KP and storage, armory, and a med unit. We’d thrown up a basic fence around it but nothing really heavy in the way of security. Villagers started loading the injured on trucks and taking them up to the base, gathering outside the gate and begging, just begging for care.” 

Coulson paused there for a moment, biting his lip. The further he’d gotten into the story, the closer he came to reporting on events, the less he seemed to shake. Clint knew the comfort of a debrief after a hard op, the way the necessary distance settled something in your head, and knew he was seeing it now. But on  _ begging _ , Coulson’s voice had broken again, gone high and soft. Clint scooched a little closer, reluctant to put a hand on him, afraid he would shatter under the added pressure.

“That was when the second bomb went off,” Coulson said.

“ _ Shit _ ,” Clint hissed, the curse dragged out of him. “Inside the gates?”

Coulson nodded.

“It was in one of the trucks being used to evac the headman’s family.” He rattled to a halt, looking blank.

“So,” Clint said, when it was clear Coulson couldn’t find words to continue. “So… what was it? The supervisor from Archstone working with Manshour and… and maybe the headman? To smuggle opium together? And I was… Archstone hired me because they… wanted to take out a middle man? Take control?”

“You’re very quick,” Coulson said, almost lightly. “I suspect so. No  _ proof _ of course. Hell, I suspected it the moment you told me who’d hired you. But I didn’t...  I didn’t do anything, d’you see, Clint? I’d gotten too damn complacent. We went  _ to _ the war, the war wasn’t in our valley.”

“I’m so sorry,” Clint said quietly, and laid a hand on the cold tile next to Coulson’s thigh. “Phillip, I’m… I’m so very sorry you had to handle that. What… what happened when you came back?”

Coulson shrugged. 

“What do you think? We had a mess at our own gates. Jumped off the chopper, ran to the med tent and made sure we still had doctors left, gathered the surviving troops from the compound then started triage. Sent the chopper off with the first batch of wounded and kept going while we waited for help. I…” he shuddered. “Our XO and I stayed out and… and put…. we made piles. Ours, theirs… grandparents… children. Who went first. Who was… who couldn’t…. I had to choose.” His voice as he said it was tiny, and Clint grabbed his hand.

_ We made piles _ . 

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said roughly. He could see it far too well in his mind’s eye, the bodies lying in in the desert sun. For a moment they were blessedly anonymous, then his traitor brain started to repopulate the piles with faces he could recognize. “I-- trust me, I know. I’ve been… I know.” 

He still couldn’t get Coulson to look at him, and it was probably for the best, because Clint thought his heart would burst if Coulson turned and all Clint could see was Afghanistan in his eyes. Instead he moved closer, maneuvering on the hard floor until he was pressed right next to Coulson from shoulder to thigh, holding Coulson’s hand tight in both of his. It was instinct, mostly. He didn’t even have time to worry that Coulson might feel trapped before the man was slumping against him.

“I’m sorry you know,” Coulson said, and Clint felt a laugh bubble over despite himself.

“Well, so am I.” He hesitated a moment, then slipped his arm out from under Coulson and looped it around his shoulder, letting his thumb dig into the flesh of his shoulder and circle, trying to pull him back to the present. “When you said… in Arizona… when you said you’d just ended a bad deployment before the, um, before the PTSD hit, that was what you meant. Right?”

“That was… mostly it,” Coulson sighed, his breath warm against Clint’s collarbone. “But not quite. After that we redeployed-- next valley over, under a different warlord’s control. Army asked a lot of questions about the massacre, but nothing came of it. Everyone knew it was Manshour but no one was gonna flat out say it, especially not the surviving contractors. I… I didn’t tell anyone.” He blinked, and looked up at Clint, blue eyes damp and a little misty but not, thank god, in another country.

“You didn’t tell anyone about Manshour?”

“I didn’t tell anyone about Miami,” Coulson said, like it was meant to reassure him, like he thought Clint was somehow worried. “Didn’t seem to be any point, too goddamn late for it to help. Everyone knew Farouk had been killed; what good was it talking about the kid who’d killed him? It wouldn’t prove much against Archstone, not with you in the wind.”

“I don’t care about that, frankly,” Clint growled. 

“You care more than you realize,” Coulson told him darkly. 

“Phillip,” Clint said, nettled, “If you want to stop talking, just stop talking. Don’t tell me what I care about. What happened  _ to you _ ?” 

Somewhere off in the distance he could see implications he wanted to explore later, sure, but at the moment he had a senior agent of SHIELD-- or an ex-lover, depending on how you looked at it-- spilling out what seemed to be years of accumulated poison onto his shoulder. If he was gonna endure the pain, he was also gonna make sure all the bad stuff was drained from the wound. 

“Me?” Coulson seemed startled, and wriggled a little under Clint’s arm, as if changing positions to press against Clint’s hip would help him access the memory. “Ah. I had a very controlled, very quiet breakdown.”

“Understandable,” Clint whispered.

“In retrospect, yes. For some reason no one saw it coming at the time. Me least of all. I stopped sleeping. Stopped eating. Started having headaches that’d last for days. Docs didn’t find anything physical. Few weeks into that, we got intel Manshour was moving south, following his fighters. We headed up into the mountains to lay an ambush for him. I remember…” he frowned. “I remember someone shouting, and then machine guns and then… nothing, really, until Rammstein. I’d fainted dead away in the middle of the firefight. Hit my head on a rock. Scared my squad shitless. And that was it.” 

He sat up, pushing away from Clint and shrugging his shoulders back like he was waking up from a nap on a swaybacked couch and was just discovering all the ways he’d fucked over his spine. 

“That was it?” Clint prompted.

“For my Army career. While I was recovering, some damned busybody had decided to give me a discharge. They could’ve discharged me ODPMC, they said-- that, uh, that’d be ‘other designated physical and mental conditions.’ When you’re not broken or crazy enough to count as disabled, but you’re still unfit to serve.

“But they didn’t; my CO asked higher command to discharge me “at the convenience of the government,’ so no one would know how messed up I was. Or so no one would question just exactly how I’d gotten messed up. They told me they did it as a gesture of appreciation, to be nice. But it wasn’t nice, because it meant when I went to the VA, no one had bothered to document the mess my head was in. And so, well,” he frowned down at his cuffs as he tugged them back into place. “I nearly killed myself while waiting for them to decide I really was depressed. As you know.”

“Yeah.”

The silence was heavy between them for a long moment as Coulson put himself to rights, hesitating a little as he finished the minute adjustments of shirtsleeves and hair, dragging them out until Clint was torn between fondness and impatience. Now that the crisis was over questions were bubbling up in his head. 

And more than questions; each little adjustment Coulson made to his slacks, freeing his knees from damp linen, only drove into Clint more deeply that he not only could have lost Phillip before he could find him again to a lonely death in his own bedroom, but to Afghanistan itself. Phillip, bright, broad, intense Phillip, could have been one of the bodies heaped on those piles just inside the base’s gate. It was just a trick of fate his squad had been deployed, not one of the others. (Or possibly a trick of Manshour Abdul Rauf’s-- a spike of gratitude thin as a needle caught in Clint’s throat at the idea.)

“Barton,” Coulson said at last, turning back to look at Clint. He was clearly trying for a steady face and he was just as clearly failing-- because while Clint could put down Coulson’s flush to the heat and humidity inside their little tiled cubicle, a crease of Clint’s shirt had imprinted itself on Coulson’s cheek. “I... “ A frown, and a lip bite that had Clint catching his breath. “I didn’t mean to--”

“It’s fine,” Clint said. “Turnabout is fair play. I owe you for letting me cry all over you in Arizona, still.”

“You really  _ don’t _ ,” Coulson started, but Clint waved him off. That was a whole other conversation, one he didn’t think he could begin have yet-- if ever.

“Just tell me,” he said quickly, “how many people know, at SHIELD?”

“About you?” Coulson frowned. 

“About  _ you _ ,” Clint clarified. Then, “someone knows about me?”  _ Which part _ ? And why did it hurt more to think someone out there was looking at him and seeing Miami, apart from Phillip himself, than that someone might be thinking he caused a massacre?

“Just Nick,” Coulson said. “In both cases. He heard about what happened while I was still at Rammstein.”

“So when he agreed to bring me in, he knew we’d slept together and I’d caused the massacre that ended your Army career,” Clint clarified, rolling that awful idea over in his mind. “That’s… that’s pretty fucked up, Coulson.”

Coulson shook his head vehemently.

“No. I never told anyone that we-- that I ever met you before SHIELD. It wasn’t relevant.” He looked so sincere, so concerned to reassure Clint, it was like a punch to the chest. “Nick’s the only one who knows you killed Ghulman Farouq. He found out after, ah, after he saw the footage from the hospital room. I had to tell him  _ something _ ,” he added as Clint snapped his head up to stare.

“You didn’t tell the Director that I was the guy behind the massacre that got you kicked out of the Army, and yet you were pissed that I wouldn’t give up  _ Natasha _ ?” he asked without thinking, his voice cracking on the end of it. 

“I might owe you an apology,” Coulson said, looking chagrined.

“You  _ think _ ?” Clint managed.

\----

Phil watched as Clint-- as Barton, he needed to put that distance back between them-- processed the full extent of his hypocrisy. Barton’s jaw worked as he-- probably-- turned over their entire fight in the hospital again in his head. Flashes of hurt chased anger across his face, and he kept shaking his head, like he was in the middle of an argument with himself. Phil and pressed his hands flat to the tile floor to keep them from shaking. He wondered how hard he’d have to press before the tile cracked, and whether he would crack first, crumpling forward and demanding Barton hold him together like he had earlier, while Phil was lost in the steaming blood and the smoke and sun of his memories. 

Barton would shove him off if he tried it. Phil could recognize basic empathy when he felt it tight around his shoulders; Clint-- Barton, goddamnit-- wasn’t the kind of person to turn away a man having a flashback. The comfort he’d offered had little to nothing to do with Phil himself. If that had been personal at all, it had been Clint-- Barton!-- holding  _ Phillip _ , for whom he seemed to have had some improbable, lingering fondness before he found out Phillip and Phil were the same person.

Phil wasn’t going to complain about that, if it had been the case. Phillip had been in dire need of an embrace after the massacre-- enough that it had made him stupid about too many other things. The companionship his ex had offered had been brief, and so bitter at the end. Having Chris’s arms around him again, however belatedly, felt disturbingly like validation for that vanished self.

The aftermath of the massacre and his breakdowns had drained Phil mentally, spiritually, and physically. He’d gotten so much smaller, so much tighter. SHIELD had spread him out again a little, but not enough that Clint apparently saw a connection between Phil and the soldier Phillip-- as he’d demonstrated so dramatically by failing to recognize Phil for two entire years. 

And Phil had broken the connection between himself and Barton, the one that had made them Chris and Phillip again for a moment, when he’d pulled away and tried to fidget himself back to equanimity. It was probably for the best; this conversation was one Agent Coulson owed Agent Barton, not something Phillip owed Chris.

“In my defense, and it’s not a lot of defense,” Phil said quietly, “the last thing I wanted to do was tell you about all…  _ that _ … just after you came to SHIELD. You were… you had enough in front of you, without dredging that up out of the past and ambushing you with it.”

“Right,” Barton said, still looking faintly mutinous, “and obviously you couldn’t just talk to me like a normal person, without being all ‘hey remember that guy you killed in Miami? Funny story…’. That’d be too much to ask of a fucking secret agent, right? What the hell was--” he stopped suddenly, his mouth open in a heart wrenching little “o.” 

“I couldn’t really, no,” Phil said, quietly. “Even at the risk of my secret agent rep.”

“Because seeing me was a trigger?” Barton asked softly.

There, at least, Phil could reassure him, and did with a swift shake of the head.

“Trust me, I’m reminded enough anyway,” he rasped.

“So was I right the first time?” Barton asked, “when I said you must’ve resented me. Was that it? You resented me for killing Farouk. For getting your friends killed.” This, it seemed, made sense to him. The last of the anger had drained from his face, leaving resignation in its wake.

Phil hesitated. He wanted to say “no,” but the word felt like ashes on his tongue. Barton was watching him so sharply that Phil fully understood why he’d once used the codename “Hawkeye.” 

“You didn’t get my friends killed… and that wouldn’t have been fair of me. To resent you but never tell you why.”

“No,” Barton snorted, “it really wouldn’t. I mean, I’m not one to fucking talk, but at least with me and Natasha, she knows what she did-- oh.  _ Oh. _ ” He went distant suddenly, seeing some kind of invisible revelation in the air over Phil’s shoulder. Phil bit back the urge to ask him to share with the class. “No, that’s not it, is it? You were afraid. Of what would happen if you told me.”

“I told you, I didn’t want to burden you--” Phil started. Barton waved him quiet. He was clearly on the track now, and it was terrifying to see. 

“Naw, we covered that. No, I get it now. You were… look.” Barton paused, finger against his lips, and Phil swallowed hard and tried to brace himself for whatever was coming next.

You know what sucks worst, about having Natasha here,” Barton continued. “It’s not that she betrayed me, and now I’ve got to work with her again. And it’s not that she doesn’t know what she did to me-- lemme tell you, she  _ knows _ . I didn’t have to fucking tell her, everyone else at SHIELD seems to have taken care of that for me, whether I wanted it or not. No,” he leaned forward, eyes locking onto Phil’s. “What sucks most? The part I keep getting stuck on? Is that she knows what she did, and she feels sorry,-- but not sorry  _ enough.  _ She doesn’t fucking  _ get _ it, how bad it was after she abandoned me. I mean, turns out she had her own shit and that was more important, but God it hurts that she wasn’t more sorry, ya know?”

Phil took it all back. No sharing with the class.

No sharing ever.

Could this be over sometime soon, before Barton removed Phil’s heart for show and tell? He seemed to be reading it far better than Phil had at the time. No matter how he’d imagined Chris’s-- Clint’s-- Barton’s-- face if Phil came clean, it was always somehow not right, not enough. 

This conversation wasn’t one he could have imagined.

“That… seems somewhat unfair,” Phil started, feeling his way through. “Asking her to change the past.”

“Yeah,” Barton grumbled, “especially ‘cause she doesn’t know about Katrina, and damn sure couldn’t have predicted it. It’s both unfair and stupid of me. Doesn’t mean I don’t resent her for it, anyway. Or that you’d have resented me if you’d told me about the massacre, and it hadn’t fucking wrecked me. If I hadn’t felt responsible like you did, right?”

“Ah,” Phil said, proud of managing that. He swallowed hard and tried again, through the nausea. “I don’t expect you to feel responsible, Clint, I really don’t. You’re not… you’re not.”

“Neither are you, but that doesn’t stop you blaming yourself,” Barton told him. As reassurance, it fell as flat as Barton must have known it would. Phil felt himself grimace, and Barton snorted. “Yeah, see, like that. ‘Course if it  _ did _ wreck me, you’d feel as bad as I would if Natasha felt like an absolute shitheel about what she did to me, right? So it’s a fuckin’ catch-22, okay. I get it.”

“I don’t resent you,” Phil said. “I really don’t.” And he really didn’t, he felt the truth of it on his tongue as it came out, bitter as truth usually was. All that time spent worrying that he would hate Barton for it, taint his memories of Chris irreparably, and for what? In the end there was nothing but emptiness beneath his breastbone. “How could I? It’d have been impossible for you to… for it to affect you as badly as it affected me. You’d have had to be there. And I don’t wish that on anybody.”

“Hrm,” Barton said, and finally dropped his eyes. “Yeah. Not gonna lie, Coulson, it’s a nice addition to my nightmares but it’s not gonna be the feature, ya know? I don’t know their faces, I didn’t sit down to eat with them. I didn’t know any of ‘em but you. But I dunno.” He wound down, picking at the hem of his pants.

“You don’t know?” Phil asked, leaning forward in his turn. Barton looked back up at him, speculation in his eyes.

“I might know--” he started. What he might have said, Phil never got to hear. At that moment, the shower curtain was wrenched open and Romanoff stared down at them.

“What in the world are you doing in there?” she demanded, and then continued without waiting for an answer. “I need one of you to come with me. Now.”

Barton looked over at Phil, pursing his lips, and then back up at Romanoff.

If nothing else, Phil decided, he could give Barton a break, if he really felt that way about Romanoff. He started to get up.

Barton pushed him back down.

“I’ll come,” he said. “Beats scrubbing the shower.” His shove turned into an absent pat on Phil’s shoulder. Romanoff switched her glare from Barton to Phil at the gesture, then visibly shrugged it off.

Phil was left sprawling in the humid cubicle as they let themselves out of the apartment. He put his head back against the tile wall, and concentrated on soaking in as much moistness as he could. Anything to drive out the memories of blood on sand, of desiccating wind carrying the stench of death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Phil describes the aftermath of a bombing in Afghanistan, and his PTSD resulting from it. He uses some graphic language about the casualties.
> 
> On a cheerier note: next chapter... has more content warnings. And pedicures!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pedicures, fajitas, and Clint's turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains content warnings for aftermath of a disaster. Please check the end notes for more details.

“Is it safe to talk now?” Clint asked when the spa lady finally left.

He asked it in pidgin Russian, just in case Natasha was far down whatever headspace she’d been in since she’d arrived in their condo and dragged him out. He hadn’t used it since she’d come to SHIELD and figured that, if nothing else, the novelty should rouse her.

Natasha considered for a moment, lips pursed.

“I suppose so,” she said finally, in English, “and your accent is still terrible.”

“I blame my teacher,” Clint told her. 

“I would have assumed,” Natasha responded, her disapproval only increasing, “that your current employer would have provided you with Russian teachers to correct that.”

Clint debated several answers to this, all of them equally true, such as  _ no one thought I’d be doing much infiltration work _ and  _ they were too busy sending me to flight school _ but finally settled on:

“Jas and I did conversational practice whenever we had down-time. His vocabulary was great, but his accent-- ужасный.”

Natasha gave him a long, openly considering look, and Clint tried not to blush. He was well aware it was the least defensive he’d been with her since… well, since she’d left him high and dry in Hackensack. He couldn’t have explained precisely why he’d said it, except maybe it was something in the air here, clearing his lungs.

Or else something in the air he’d cleared with Coulson.

“Jasper was a good friend to you,” Natasha said at last, a complete statement of fact more than a question.

“Well he never brought me any place like this,” Clint sighed, and looked down at his feet. “What the hell did they put in the water?”

“ Lavender, I think,” Natasha said, settling in. “To relax you.”

“I’m in the back room of a spa with not great sightlines, between you and the door, I’m in a robe, my feet are trapped in a little bowl, and the spa lady is coming back with all kinds of poking implements and a… a… is that a rasp? I’m not relaxed, Natasha.”

“No? But I find I am getting more so by the minute.”

She looked like it too; settling back into the deep chair and letting her eyes drift shut for a moment. 

“Oh, is that why you brought me here? Guard your back while you get your toes did?” Clint asked, trying to muster disgruntlement. It was harder than he’d expected. 

“Perhaps I was worried about your bunions,” Natasha said, before taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and cuddling further into the chair. 

Clint figured that was his cue to watch the spa lady, who had returned to the room and was quietly re-arranging the dubious tools of her trade on their tray, while conspicuously not paying attention to either of them. 

Given her presence, Clint certainly wasn’t gonna get real relaxation in, but maybe the quiet time would give him time to think about Coulson-- and about all the people in that little village.

How hard did a butterfly have to flap its wings to set off a hurricane half the world away? Harder or softer than an archer had to shoot a man in Miami to set off an IED in a jeep in Afghanistan? To drown Phillip so deep in blood that he was sloshing out of it even years later? Somehow, the steamy little back room with the lavender footbaths leached some of the sandy horror out of the image for Clint. 

Even the spa lady’s puttering in the background helped, domestic and grounding.

Clint considered the past from a distance; how it fit with Jasper’s words to him.  _ If I didn’t know better, I’d have said Coulson was scared of you _ . Well maybe Coulson wasn’t scared  _ of Clint _ , but he clearly had been of their nearly-shared past. Not like Clint didn’t have experience with that feeling-- Natasha’s reappearance proved that. 

Not that what he’d set in motion in Miami was the same as Natasha ditching him in Hackensack. 

It wasn’t like he’d betrayed Phillip, after all; just left him alone in a taqueria, disappointed but safe and sound. Then again, it wasn’t like Natasha had known, when she’d left Clint in that warehouse, where he’d go next-- or what would happen there. She hadn’t exactly been planning on landing him in the middle of a natural disaster.

“Arg,” he muttered, and sloshed his toes in the basin. Way better not to think about  _ that _ at the moment. He took a deep breath, and inhaled so much floral steam he ended up choking.

“I thought I would like this,” Natasha mused, startling him, “if I could just relax. But of course I couldn’t both enjoy it and watch my own exits.”

“Uh, right. Naturally,” Clint said. “And… do you? Like it?”

Natasha folded her hands and wriggled. He’d never seen her do anything like it before; it was like someone else had slipped into her body and was getting comfortable.

“Hmmm. Yes. Definitely yes.”

“Well…. All right. Good. Then.” 

He watched her smirk melt into something softer.

“I never tried this before,” she said, continuing as if she was half dreaming the words. It wasn’t true, Clint was sure; she was still sharp as a tack underneath the drawl. But it was fascinating. 

“You’ve never been to a spa?”

“Don’t sound so startled, you’ve never been to one yourself. No, I mean, I have never done this when it wasn’t for a… a job. I, myself, have never done this.”

While Clint was trying to decide how to respond to that, the other spa lady returned, bringing more tea. It seemed to be the first lady’s cue to stop re-arranging things and come over to help fuss over them. His feet were efficiently removed from his basin and vigorously patted with towels. He forced himself to stay relaxed; the fact that they moved with the same brisk gentleness as his favorite SHIELD nurses helped considerably.

Natasha had tensed with the first touch, and Clint watched as she ratcheted her body back down, frowning as it didn’t immediately obey. In their time together before SHIELD, she’d endured everything from accidental shoulder-brushes to flat-out groping from strange mob bosses without letting her body show any unplanned reaction. 

But then, if he took her at her word, that hadn’t been her.

“Hrmph,” said his own spa lady, looking over his feet with a small frown on her face. Clint fought back the urge to apologize-- and then the urge to yank his feet back, when she picked up the metal rasp. She gave him a firm look, very akin to one Coulson produced whenever Clint needed to just simmer down already, and applied the rasp to the back of his heel.

His toes, and entire body, curled up, but his heel stayed fast.

“Okay,” he breathed, willing his butt back into the chair. “Okay… okay.”

“Okay,” the pedicure lady repeated, and went back to filing his heels smooth. Natasha was still watching him, and he tried to give her a reassuring smile and thumbs up.

She rolled her eyes, and let her own lady get to work. Somehow, the file being used on Natasha’s feet looked much less like an implement of torture. Clint sighed.

The more he settled, the more Natasha did, Clint knew, so he forced himself to stay calm through the rasping, which turned pleasant after a bit. He even managed to go with the flow when the lady picked up a stick and started poking at his cuticles-- but only barely. It was a little too close to memories of being prodded for information for his taste.

He needed something to distract his brain. 

“Hey Natasha,” he said, looking back at her. She was staring at the woman who was using a stick on her own toes as if it were an entirely alien process she had to memorize.

“Hm?” she said, and her hands flexed once.

How stupid was it, the two of them coming here? Both their brains were too messed up to read a fucking spa day as benign treatment without continual effort. 

Poke, poke, poke, went the orangewood stick, pushing at the edges of his pinky toe.

Natasha winced.

“I’m sorry,” Clint said, before he knew he was going to.

“About what?” Natasha snapped, looking up from her toes.

_ I’m sorry I drove you to this _ , he thought to himself. 

“Um, the shower, I guess,” he said out loud. “That, um, that you have to deal with us being slobs all over.”

The look Natasha gave him was two parts incredulous and one part impatient. And yeah, yeah, he knew-- it wasn’t about the chest hair, not really. (Anyway, the chest hair was mostly Coulson’s-- and maybe Clint would’ve figured out he was Phillip earlier if he’d gotten a chance to see  _ that _ again in the last two years. Of course, Coulson had steered just as clear of the locker room when Clint was in it as he had the whole subject of their shared past, so that was another level of messed up to contemplate later.)

“I appreciate the apology,” Natasha said, in a tone that was clearly trying to end the conversation. And then she winced again; the lady had taken clippers to her cuticles and  _ oh god _ so had Clint’s lady to his and--

“And sorry for all the um, the glaring at you. From corners and shit.” Clint added.

There was a brief pause of the clippers and Natasha’s breath.

“Ah,” Natasha said.

“And… and the stalking.”

The clippers rattled on the tray, and Clint looked down to find both spa ladies staring at him. They looked over at Natasha, a little concerned.

“You were worried about me,” she said, and then turned to her own lady, speaking in Spanish. “Did you want me to choose a lotion?”

Yes, yes, certainly, the lady did. By the time Clint and Natasha had the merits of the various lotions and oils explained to them, and Clint had let Natasha choose for them both, calm had been restored to the room.

At least, it was restored until the first cold squish of lotion and fingers between Clint’s toes.

“Eek!” he said.

“Hng--” Natasha added. After a moment, she swallowed hard. “It is all right,” she said in Russian, turning to him.

“What is?” Clint asked, trying to get his eyes to pop back into his own head.

“The… what you have been doing. I did not like it. I still do not like it. But I do understand it.”

Clint shook his head.

“It’s not all right,” he told her. “You do not deserve it.”

“Your resentment?” she asked, now paying far more attention to him than to the lady cupping her heels and rubbing her arches. “Do I not? I… I hurt you pitifully. I betrayed you, Clint. And now I will not go away.”

“I know,” Clint sighed. “But I did not do it because I resented you. Well. Perhaps the glowering. But the… the watching. I just wanted…” he broke off, realizing he still didn’t have quite the words to explain it. “It was stupid.” 

“Color?” Natasha’s spa lady asked, and she broke away from her stare at Clint to sort through dozens of little bottles, finally choosing a dark red.

“You could have done much worse,” she muttered at him. “Who would have blamed you?”

_ Coulson _ , Clint thought.  _ And Fury. And Doc Heilman.  _

And himself.

“Can I get some of that too?” he said, instead of any of that, and turned his mind to the little bottles himself.

When he was finished, he looked back at Natasha, who was watching with fascination as her toes turned crimson.

“I’ll try to stop,” he said. 

Your accent improved very quickly,” she replied. “I think perhaps SHIELD did do you some good.”

“Oh, this?” Clint let his Russian disintegrate again. “I did listen when you corrected me. It was just funnier to pretend I didn’t. And it meant your Russian friends didn’t realize I could understand everything.”

“Вот чёрт, Clint!” Natasha yelped. “You bastard!”

Clint felt that even the streak of polish across his big toe as his spa lady dropped her brush to stare was worth it.

\---

As they walked away from the spa, back off the beach and up the long roads towards their hillside condo, Clint watched Natasha stare at her toes. She was, he could tell, squishing the separators that held them apart. Clint had ditched his own separators early since they didn’t fit well under combat boots, but he found he was kind of regretting it. She looked like she was having fun. 

At least he was fairly sure that’s what the ghost of a smile that kept flitting across her face meant. He’d never seen anything like it on her, so he couldn’t be certain. It looked almost-- she looked almost-- kidlike. 

Except not really, and if she ever  _ ever _ caught wind he’d thought that, even for a moment, she’d eviscerate him. But there was something different about her. Clint narrowed his eyes and watched her toes, trying to put a finger on it.

She looked, he decided, new. Obsessive, maybe, in that way he’d heard kids could get-- like with that thing with her playing  _ Gardenia  _ over and over and over (and over and over.) And the way she was grinning at her toes, and if she’d really-- if she really meant it, what she’d said in the spa--

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Clint hissed, and Natasha whipped her head up. 

“Where?” she asked.

Her face was still and even, but beneath it he could see the tightness, the way her entire body had shifted without seeming to into high alert.

“No, ah-- sorry. Stubbed my toe.” 

“Don’t ruin your polish,” she grumbled, and went back to ignoring him, slowly de-ruffling.

Clint watched her a while longer out of the corner of his eye. No wonder she’d seemed so off to him, this whole time, no wonder he hadn’t been able to figure out her angle; this Natasha was one he’d never seen, one who didn’t exist when he knew her-- one who couldn’t have.

Fury’d told him a little about Natasha’s past. Clint had known, intellectually, that she hadn’t been entirely under her own control when she’d left him in the warehouse. The Red Room had implanted goals, triggers, agendas, deep in her subconscious. It had warped her memories in ways that made him shudder to think about. But the thing was, even if she hadn’t been in control, she’d  _ thought _ she was. She’d made a conscious decision to leave him.

Natasha’s judgement had been something he’d relied on implicitly back when they’d been together. It’d kept him alive so many times over-- at least, up until that last time. Young as she was, she’d been the one with more experience, the one who was certain of her cause and her place. Clint had been her puppy, really, when you looked at it right.

This Natasha, basking in the heat of the road and the sun above them as they wended their way back towards their dingy condo, was only pretending at certainty.  _ I betrayed you _ , she’d said.  _ I deserve it _ .

And yeah, he had to admit, the Natasha who’d left him in Hackensack did deserve it.

But… but  _ this _ Natasha, this new Natasha who was only starting to process what she did, and why she did it, who somehow, bafflingly, seemed younger than him, did she deserve it?

And if she didn’t, Clint thought as he turned his key in the door to their building, as Natasha watched his back, how did he learn to let go of the resentment, how to split the two of them apart? Was it even possible?

He opened the door, and paused. Behind him, Natasha froze as well.

“Is that…” she started, and Clint shook his head. 

Nothing seemed out of place in the entryway; the papers they’d perched precariously on the credenza were still wobbling in the breeze, the proximity alarm still beeped green in its corner under a footed urn, everything was as they’d left it. Except for the distinct smell of frying meat wafting in from the back of the condo….

Natasha wandered that way as Clint slipped upstairs to check it out, just in case. Nothing seemed horribly out of place-- until he got to the bathroom. Coulson had clearly been at work after he and Natasha left; the shower had been scrubbed to gleaming and all the fixtures were polished and twinkling brightly. 

From the downstairs, Clint could hear Natasha greeting Coulson, their voices too low for him to make out. 

They were in the kitchen, Natasha standing in the doorway looking a tiny bit concerned, and Coulson by the stove. His sleeves were rolled up, and sweat dampened the back of his shirt. He was, Clint realized with a distant sort of shock, frying fajita strips in a large cast iron pan. 

Clint wasn’t even sure where he’d found the steak for them, much less the pile of peppers on the counter next to him. 

He must have made some kind of sound, though he wasn’t sure what, because Coulson turned from the stove to look at him. 

It was a long, long look, and full of apology. And then Coulson winced, like he expected Clint to… Clint wasn’t sure what. 

All he knew was that it hurt his heart as much in its own way as Natasha’s smile as she squished her toe separators had. 

What the hell had he done, either these past few hellish weeks or in the months of resentment that had preceded them, to deserve the kind of vulnerability they’d each just given him?

Clint knew he was staring too long; Coulson ducked his head and Natasha was turning to look at him.

“I, uh,” Clint said, and then stopped. There was no end to that sentence he could think of that would hold weight in the silence of the kitchen. “I um… if you’re getting dinner why don’t I run out and pick up tequila?”

“Good plan,” Coulson said softly.

So Clint did.

\----

Natasha watched Clint go, unsurprised that he was taking the opportunity to flee. She was well aware that she’d strained his tenuous goodwill and guilt, making him play bodyguard. He’d surprised her twice in the last few hours; the second time with the delicate pastel polish that graced his long toes. It was definitely best to give him space to think, or fume, or whatever he was planning to do.

She considered retreating to her room, but something in the contained way that Coulson was using his spatula stopped her. His face was calm, if pale-- and again, she was well aware she’d yelled at them both enough to deserve that. His shoulders weren’t especially high, nor was he fidgeting or holding his breath. And yet, the scrape, scrape of the wood against the sides of the cast iron, meticulously collecting spice and fat and depositing them back on the meat, screamed to her  _ I’m compromised _ .

For a moment, but only a moment, it flashed through her mind to act hurt that Clint had left. But no-- that avenue had proved both distasteful and counterproductive. There must be another option besides standing awkwardly in the doorway, watching. 

“If you’re not going upstairs, could I get you to chop the onions?” Coulson asked.

Ah, well, yes.

Natasha went over to stand next to him, and considered the onion in front of her. Somehow, the Red Room had entirely neglected to teach her how to mince or julienne as part of her training. What a curious omission.

After a moment, Coulson looked up. 

“Have you ever--” he started, looking down at the thing then up at her.

“No,” Natasha admitted, “but I will figure it out.”

He looked dubious.

“I  _ will _ ,” she said, and selected a knife from the block. Coulson shrugged, turned back to his sizzling meat, and casually selected a different knife from the block, setting it in front of her.

“Straight edge is better than serrated,” he said stiffly. “Please cut it into long strips. Remove the skin first.”

This she did, and nearly took her own skin off as well when the onion wobbled on its round edge and slipped. Coulson pretended not to notice, and went to shift the meat to a platter and add more fat to the frying pan.

She was taking too long, and he was watching her uneven chops. 

“I would like to extend my apologies,” he said, and her knife slipped again. He winced. “Ah-- sorry, do you need to concentrate?”

“I suspect, that after all this time, I can manage to both cut things and listen,” Natasha managed not to growl. “How much more do you need?”

“Oh, um-- that’s good, please do the same for the peppers. You, ah-- the seeds. Take them out, though. And… don’t touch your eyes with your hands after you cut the dark green ones.”

“Oh, you don’t need to tell me that,” Natasha said sweetly, “I’ve made my own pepper spray.”

“Okay--” Coulson looked more impressed than anything else at that revelation. “But that’s not what we’re doing here, and the faucet is too low to do a really good flush if you get it in your eyes.”

“I will keep that in mind.” 

If she’d hoped that would be the end of his apology, she hoped in vain. Once he was satisfied that she was not going to injure herself, Coulson started up again.

“I want to correct a misperception,” he said, while focusing assiduously on his onions. “If I gave any impression that I-- shit.”

“Coulson?” Natasha asked, because he’d suddenly stopped and banged his head once against the vent hood.

“I sound like something out of a Regency novel, sorry-- it’s not one of my better defense mechanisms.”

“And you need defense mechanisms around me,” Natasha supplied for him, pausing in the midst of picking the core out of a large red pepper.

“That… that’s what I’m trying to apologize for,” Coulson sighed. “I mean, I don’t mean-- look. I know it looks like I don’t trust you with, um, with team dynamics. It’s not… I’m not trying to shut you out.”

“Ah. What  _ are _ you doing then?”

“I um… I trust you with team dynamics all right but… I think… I didn’t trust you with Clint. Barton.”

“Well, of  _ course _ you didn’t,” Natasha told him, when it became clear he was braced for a reaction. “Nor does Clint-- nor do I, sometimes.”

Oh, where had that last admission come from, and why had she not kept it to herself?

“It’s only fair,” she managed, and pulled another pepper to her.

“It’s not really,” Coulson said. “Not when it’s just the three of us on this team. And not when… not when I should really trust myself less than anyone else. With Barton, I mean.”

He mumbled that last bit so quietly that she barely caught it. And when she did, was not sure how to react. So something besides grout-scrubbing had happened in that dingy little bathroom after she’d left, after all. Perhaps that explained something of Clint’s eagerness to follow her out of the condo.

“Do you want my help after all?” she asked cautiously, and Coulson looked up with horror in his eyes.

“No!” he said. “God-- no. I’m sorry, Romanoff, it’s really  _ really _ none of your business. But I shouldn’t have made it your business by letting it affect the team. It was wrong to let you get hurt by it too. I should have… I should have addressed it ages ago, really,” he said. He seemed surprised by that last part.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” she said carefully, “and as you don’t trust me with Clint, I suppose I cannot expect--”

“Expect more,” Coulson snapped. “Expect me to trust you with Barton. I don’t need you to coddle me, Romanoff, I need you to call me on my bullshit, please. And that’s a piece of bullshit.”

“No, but how?” Natasha let her knife drop; she could not concentrate on dismembering the peppers and parsing Coulson’s meaning at the same time. “If I were you, I wouldn’t trust me with either Clint or with SHIELD and its secrets. I was a Red Room agent, you know better than I think anyone else outside of my brain-dirtiers what that means.”

“I know that was nothing you ever gave real consent to,” Coulson told her. “It’s not fair to blame you for the torture you were put through as a child.”

“Oh, that again,” Natasha sighed. “I suppose I will never get out from under the shadow of those damned butchers. Certainly not if you keep pitying me. I don’t want pity. And I am more than strong enough to handle you blaming me.”

“But you don’t deserve to be blamed. Not by anyone at SHIELD, not by me. Barton--”

“Barton has every reason and right to blame me,” Natasha told him firmly. “And if you don’t want me in your business with him, you will need to keep out of his with me. It’s frustrating and inconvenient, yes, but at least it’s honest. And to be very frank, I don’t want you looking at me as if I am another Dottie Underwood. As… as something broken. Your Director and many of your staff-- you, yourself, even-- have put considerable effort into mending me. If I cannot trust you to put blame where it belongs, how can I trust you as a teammate?”

“Ah,” Coulson said, smiling just a little, “I think I’m spreading it around pretty evenly right now. Fine, you can keep the blame for what happened between you and Barton, I’ll keep it for what happened between you and me. But if you want blame for anything else, you’re going to have to argue about it with Nick Fury.”

“He… seems like an acceptable judge,” Natasha acknowledged. Inside, however, something in her heart was grumbling. What was it worth being gone from the Red Room, if others were still telling her how to feel about herself? But there was no need to fight about it with Coulson. She knew what she deserved. And so long as she didn’t mope around about it the way Coulson and Clint seemed inclined to, so long as she used that guilt not to punish herself but to save others, then she didn’t see a need to offer it up to Coulson or Fury or anyone else.

“Okay,” Coulson said, nodding. He took her peppers from her and added them to the hot pan, stirring twice before continuing. “And… I’ll try to stop being an asshole, okay? If I have a problem with you, I promise I’ll let you know, give us a chance to fix it.”

“And if you have a problem with Clint?” Natasha asked, to divert him from realizing how much her eyes were starting to prickle. 

“You’ll stay out of it, please,” Coulson told her. “But… I think… I  _ hope _ he and I have… have started to deal with the, um, with our mess. And if we haven’t, we will. I will.”

He stiffened as the front door opened. Natasha did, too, but relaxed when she heard a thump and then Clint’s yelp of pain, a muffled “aw, polish, no,” and the rustle of paper. She looked over at Coulson, who looked back at her and winced.

“But… not right this minute,” he said.

\---- 

The frogs were creaking from somewhere off to the west and the breeze had cooled, freshening towards something that knew rain, even if at the second degree of separation. Down the street a yellow light glowed and flickered as figures walked in front of it-- sometimes Natasha thought it was a bonfire, at other times the sodium glow of a set of headlights. She heard the voices come low, then high, calling to each other. 

The trees shifted, shadows playing against the faint light from the open door to the little shed-cum-sunroom that sat behind them on the roof. Clint rustled and clinked within, coming slowly up the steps. Dinner had been served and eaten nearly an hour ago, and afterwards Clint had sent them both out of the kitchen so he could clean up. They’d needed the break by then; dinner had been full of heavy silences and frustrating half-sentences. They were coming around to something, perhaps. 

Natasha had spent some time alone in her room before it became too oppressive and restlessness sent her up and out to the roof. She’d found Coulson already there and settled into a comfortable mutual avoidance with him.

Now she watched Coulson quietly as he sat and stared out into the city night, and thought she could get used to him. That was  _ she _ as in Natasha, as opposed to she as in Agent Romanoff. It was an odd feeling, this quiet appreciation for company, this vague concern not for a mark or a lover or a fellow operative, just another human who seemed worth being with. Clint had asked her at one point what she wanted from him; perhaps it was something like this? This...  _ companionship _ ?

Whatever the word for it, she thought it unlikely that the two of them could ever get there, not from where she'd left him in the warehouse-- but perhaps she could find something in the pearly lilac of his toes this evening to reassure her. If he could find a direction to move forward, past her guilt and his blame, it was worth seeing--  _ he  _ was worth seeing-- if she liked the journey.

Meanwhile, she marked Phil Coulson down on her list of things she liked, and contemplated how best to determine whether his current eyebrow furrows were something she could help with. If it was still Clint causing them, offering her assistance would be a bad idea. But then, if she was asking to help  _ him _ , not intercede between them, would it be different? 

While she was still planning the opening least likely to scare him back into the house, Clint stepped through the door.

She resolutely kept her gaze straight ahead, as did Coulson, letting Clint come up behind them, and only turned a little when he set ice cream down at each of their elbows; spoons clinking in two mismatched fiestaware dishes. Not just ice cream; he'd scattered peanuts across the top and hot fudge sauce and the last of the canned pineapple. She took the dish, and her thank you came at nearly the same time as Coulson's, both of them stumbling to a halt at the end.

For a moment, she thought Clint would disappear back inside, maybe to get his own sundae, maybe just to go to bed, and then she heard a creak as he leaned back against the doorframe, the rustle of cloth as he crossed his arms, and a sigh.

"I got to New Orleans on a Saturday," he said, "and I went to ground immediately.”

It was not the opening she had expected in the least.

“I hid in this little house someone was trying to rent out to college students, down a little west of City Park by one of the cemeteries-- Masonic, I think. Or Shriners-- no wait, that’s circuses, not cemeteries. Anyway, I got into New Orleans on a Saturday. They issued the evacuation order on Sunday... but I didn't hear it."

Natasha vaguely heard Coulson’s sudden inhale next to her, and glanced over. Even in the dim light she could see he’d frozen, one hand still on the ice cream spoon. He set it down on the table next to him with a very precise clink.

“That’s up near Pontchartrain and the canals,” he said, when Clint’s pause had gone on. 

“A little south near Mid-City, I found out later-- but yeah, in  _ that _ part of town. Figures you’d know,” Clint’s snort seemed mostly perfunctory, which was why Natasha was surprised when it set Coulson babbling.

“Been there once. Long ago-- family vacation after I got out of Basic. Mom liked old cemeteries, I wasn’t-- eh. Doesn’t matter.” He flicked the memory away like a mosquito, as if it were nothing. But by Clint’s shift behind her, it most certainly was not. 

Nothing to do about it now; she noted the oddity and let it go, because Clint was speaking again, his voice low, like the story he was telling wasn’t his.

“So I didn’t hear the order in time, and by the time I found out, late that night, figured it was safer to stay where I was than try to evacuate down to the Superdome with everyone who was left behind. I wouldn’t want… I didn’t….” Natasha looked back at him, to find him frowning at her. “I wasn’t fit to deal with crowds. Figured I’d just get myself killed-- or kill somebody. Both equally likely.”

And suddenly, she understood what this story was about, where it stood in the brief timeline between her leaving him to make his own escape from the warehouse, and SHIELD picking him up in Rotterdam, bleeding and broken. He’d fled to New Orleans-- he’d always wanted to go to New Orleans, she remembered.  _ If I can’t get to Rio _ , he’d said.  _ I want to be there for Mardi Gras. God, Tasha, can’t you see it? _

But it hadn’t been Mardi Gras. He’d come just in time for another iconic, historic New Orleans event, not knowing it. And Natasha’s mind was so full of holes she hadn’t put together the pieces until now-- what had she been doing, after that warehouse? Reporting to someone, somewhere; it’d all gone blurry in her mind. Certainly not paying more than perfunctory attention to American disasters, anyway.

Clint had fled to New Orleans just before Katrina hit.

And Coulson knew it. That was why he’d been so skittish. What, he didn’t want Clint thinking he’d been researching?

“Probably for the best,” Coulson said softly, and Clint’s gaze switched to him-- much to her relief.

“Well, maybe,” Clint said. “Rode out the hurricane all right that night in another house-- one someone’d boarded up before evacuating. Sat upstairs and just waited. Not much to tell I guess? Didn’t have a radio or anything, so I just huddled. By midmorning, worst of it was over-- I thought. Didn’t know it then, but the canal up in Lakeview had burst, and half the neighborhood was flooded. Just blocks away.”

Natasha waited to see if Coulson would interject again, but he just waited, eyes limpid in the growing dark. He’d settled, she saw, gone still as if he were Clint waiting for a mark on a rooftop. Whatever it was Clint was doing, he was doing as much for Coulson as for her. And he was doing it for her, she realized. 

“What happened next?” she asked, because somehow she didn’t think the answer was going to be “and I got out and left for the Netherlands.”

“Came out in the evening,” he said, “when the wind died down and it didn’t feel like apocalypse outside anymore. Neighborhood seemed okay so I started to wander-- and that’s when I saw it: water was rising a few blocks up. 

“I went and found a radio, figured I’d listen in on the news, find out what was up, wait it out. But it got bad, listening and listening to people calling into the radio station, saying they were on their roofs, in their homes, trapped, ‘come get me’… ‘come save me.’ I stayed ‘till evening, looked out and saw water was creeping up around the house, ‘bout a foot high already. And I decided, no, maybe I didn’t want to stay. It was coming from the north, so I thought I’d get out and go south-- find the Superdome after all. 

“I walked fast, but it rose fast too. So fast. I went from water ‘round my calves to wading through-- oh, Tasha. The water brought down the debris from Lakeview. Bits of houses. Furniture. Bab... “ he swallowed. “People,” he said.

Coulson closed his eyes.

“Yeah,” Clint told him, and Natasha remembered Coulson looking at Clint over the burst main flooding their getaway on an earlier mission and wondered just how much of all this Coulson already knew. “And such. But as I got higher, it got better-- ‘till it didn’t again. Never felt much like I was going uphill or downhill, but I must have, because the water was getting deeper, and I couldn’t get south, and I couldn’t get west-- so I gave up getting to the Superdome that way, and I just followed the high ground. It was going on nightfall, and I’d lost my bow way back after the warehouse. But that was okay-- other people had weapons, right? So I picked up a gun that way.”

No need to specify what that meant, not in the dark just after a major storm, in an evacuated city-- some young thug or desperate householder meeting a tired, hounded lion cub of an assassin like Clint. 

“I walked on,” he said. “Not even sure how long, just keeping to the places where I could slosh instead of wade. Down… Esplanade, I think. Big ‘ol street, grand houses. Don’t know why I didn’t try and break in-- think I was afraid the water would rise again, like it had. And it seemed safer to keep on the move, that night. Everyone-- the people I saw-- we all thought so. Left the looters alone and they left me alone-- more or less.”

Clint’s voice was still low and relatively even, not really his debrief tone, but like the story he was telling had happened to someone else, and he was just passing it on.

“Couple times someone needed help,” he continued, “and I’d break off and follow them down into the water. We’d go get someone out of a house, or up to a roof, or onto a boat, go back in and get a pet or whatever. I kept a couple people from being dicks; why do people think a disaster is the best time to go stick a gun in someone else’s face, anyway? People just protecting what was left of their homes…. I think I was in a daze, honestly.”

There was a brief pause, a little snuffle, before Clint started up again, in a near mumble.

“Never wanted to climb into the boat myself. Didn’t want to stick around any one place long.”

“No,” Natasha said, “of course not.” She wouldn’t have, after all-- not after running for so long, not after huddling up against a hurricane, not with the water rising on all sides. Better not to be burdened with help.

And anyway, other people would need the space more.

“Along about daylight the next day,” Clint said, “I finally waded up out of the water. I’d made the French Quarter. It’s… I figured out after it’d be a two hour walk, what I did, any normal day.”

“So you made it out of the flood,” Natasha said, and sighed with relief. 

She hadn’t bothered, just after Hackensack, to consider what would happen to Clint. At the time, there was no room in her brain for anything except what the Red Room had filled it with, pumping it into her subconscious till it had burst. But if she had stopped to think about it, Natasha didn’t think she’d ever have imagined her Hawkeye wandering through a flooded city like some kind of young blonde Quixote trying to save the already- doomed. 

Phil Coulson had said he’d let Nick Fury be the judge of Natasha’s guilt for whatever she’d done in those lost days. Nick Fury had told her, more than once, she couldn’t lay at her own feet whatever had happened to Clint, that he’d made his own choices, and she’d been manipulated. Her will had been her own, but not free.

If she believed him, if she did not allow herself to write that in her own ledger, then she would have to pile it in front of her former Red Room masters, those yet living and those she had already killed. She would build herself a ladder to step over whatever walls they’d built up, fall on them and wring their necks. Stepping stones made of bodies, in the best tradition of cast-aside soldiers.

“I made it out of the flood,” Clint said, drawing her back to the topic at hand. “And then the hard part started.”

\----

Phil watched Romanoff’s face fall and found himself torn between being giddy that she had opened herself up enough to let that be visible, and being just as heartsick as she clearly was.

He didn’t know if he could take hearing about the hard part. Maybe… maybe if he went inside-- not far, just enough that he could listen without worrying about what his face was showing-- maybe that would help. 

Clint would understand.

This, already, was worse than anything he had imagined-- and Phil  _ had _ imagined, once he’d realized where Chris-- where  _ Clint _ \-- had wound up after he’d been betrayed. He’d traced the broken levees on maps of New Orleans, wondering where in the city Clint had washed up.

After Clint’s flashbacks in the desert, Phil’d had nightmares, jumbled messes where he’d meet Chris in the shimmering Miami streets at night, only to find they were actually standing in dark water and that a storm was coming, carrying the voices of his dead. He’d wrench himself awake just as Clint would lose his footing and go under, one arm stuck out and reaching for him. For hours afterwards he’d lie there, because when he’d close his eyes the dreams would hover with the luminous eyes of the watchers that had chased him in through the Rincons.

Romanoff’s hand came down hard on the arm of her chair, fingernails clicking, and it dragged Phil back to the present. She was watching him. Her face had regained its composure, but he knew that if he got up and left, he’d be failing her. 

And anyway, Clint hadn’t left when Phil was vomiting up his own trauma in the shower that afternoon. He’d stayed, and listened, and Phil couldn’t bring himself to do anything less now. Gathering up his courage, Phil risked a look back at Clint. Through the dim light that played across Clint’s face, Phil could see that Clint was watching him, waiting for a sign. He made himself nod.

Clint nodded back, swallowed, and looked away, back into the flooded past.

“I wandered around the streets a while-- all those old houses with balconies, like in the vampire movies, ya know? French quarter. Bars and restaurants everywhere, but everything was boarded up and I didn’t…” he frowned… “I didn’t necessarily trust the people in ‘em. If I were them,  _ I’d _ have a gun. And I wasn’t, uh, I wasn’t exactly capable of thinking on my feet by then.”

No, Phil imagined not, although even at half-strength, Clint was formidable.

“Um, so anyway,” Clint’s voice was hoarse from either the topic or the talking, “that was when I spotted this little old dude unloading shit from his truck, right? And it was right out there in daylight, hauling these boxes into a big old pink building with its front door standing open. And I went up and said, ya know, dude, d’you need help? I mean, like, there’re nasty people out there. He just laughed, little old creaky southern guy laugh, right? Like I was the funniest shit he’d heard all hurricane, which, yeah I guess probably I was, and he reaches into the bed of his pickup and pulls out a .22-- doesn’t aim or anything, just shows me. And he calls ‘Chance!’ and this scruffy-ass kinda half-poodle dog, big as a house, pokes his head out of the truck and barks. Then he turns to me and just says ‘we’re fine,’ and I tell him yeah I figure he is.”

Phil tried to build the mental image in his head, scruffy dog and scruffy man and bedraggled scrawny Clint, to see if he could find the grace in it that was in Clint’s voice.

“I told him to get out-- you got a truck that can take water, you got your dog and gun and you obviously got food,  _ go _ , right? See if you can make it. But the guy says he doesn’t think he can, ‘cause even if the truck could get through all the water, he can’t leave the patients.” 

“The  _ patients _ ?” Romanoff asked, a little edge to her voice that Phil was going to pretend he didn’t hear, given how much he knew about the hospital fire in her files. If he had to process that trauma too at the moment, he was going to break.

Birds of a feather, the three of them, hell-bent on plucking each other bald these last few months. 

“The patients,” Clint said gently, “yeah. Turns out, the big old building wasn’t a hotel or anything like I’d thought-- it was a nursing home and rehab center. Not the drug kind, the after surgery kind where you can stay till you can make it on your own again. Lots of old patients. Ed said they’d wait and wait till finally their family or them’d see they weren’t ever gonna  _ go _ home again, then move a few floors over to the nursing home half. 

“They’d evaced the healthy patients before the storm, but then the nurses and everyone hunkered down together with the ones they thought were too frail to move. Figured they had a good generator, had some food, they’d make it till the storm blew over.”

They hadn’t counted on the flood, though, Phil thought, trying to put himself in the place of the poor director waking up after the storm to the reality of  _ that. _

“So when we get in, the director’s there-- that’s who Ed says she is, anyway-- and she’s saying she just got off the phone with a bus company that was gonna send buses into the city to evac their residents. And I say half the city’s flooded, and she says some of the bridges are okay. So I figured I’d stay, help get everyone ready for the buses, make sure no one tried to loot, right?

“Well, no buses came. For… for four days. Wasn’t that they didn’t try-- they’d get turned back at the bridges or the police’d confiscate ‘em to use. Some, we never heard where they went. The director called, and called, and we all waited. Ed’n I and some of the nurses, we took it in turns to guard and we fought people off. Or once or twice other people’d come in-- elderly or families with kids.”

Phil closed his eyes again, knowing with a sickening certainty what was coming. Sure enough, when Clint started up again, it was with:

“People started dying. Well it was hot, and even with the generator and the food-- we didn’t have a lot of medicine.” 

Clint paused long enough that Phil wasn’t sure he would keep going-- maybe he’d gotten swamped by the memories. He was just turning around to check, when Clint stuttered and started up again.

“I went out a couple times, helped find food, ransack places we thought had meds, went on rescue missions for the staff who had families trapped. Ed and I and Chance got real damn close. Eventually the generator died and we couldn’t find enough propane. So we were plotting how to get people out in his truck and the director’s SUV and any other vehicle we could hijack-- we figured we’d deal with the damn barricades when we came to ‘em but the place’d become a death trap. The nurses were gathering people downstairs, the ones we thought could make it anyway... when the buses finally came. 

“They were something like thirty years old and probably dragged out of scrap yards, but they were  _ there, _ two of ‘em, and we all cried-- and Chance just howled until the drivers got out to come help. Which we needed-- turns out we were mostly so weak with the heat and lack of food that we nearly couldn’t get everyone lifted up and the um… and get the ones still in bed out. Ed and I stayed long enough to lock up, go get some paperwork, and we barely got out together with Chance. People tried to stop us a couple times. We drove through the night, even though the roads were shit, trying to get to Natchitoches. He had family there.”

“Ed… sounds like good people,” Phil said when Clint stopped, surprised to find his own voice still worked. It seemed important to acknowledge; the Eds of the world never got their due. 

“Hell yeah he was,” Clint said, a little smile creeping into his voice, “he tried to get me to stay but I couldn’t-- I didn’t know who was on my tail, didn’t want to bring that down on his people. I told him that and he said he’d figured me for an ex-con or something, back when he’d first seen me. I asked him why the hell he hadn’t run me off and he said… he said…”

Phil glanced over at Romanoff while he waited for Clint to swallow down whatever had caught in his throat. She was staring down at her hands, which were tangled together on her lap. Her thumb stroking the underside of her palm was the only thing that separated her from a statue.

“He told me I-- he thought I had a good heart, and he wasn’t gonna turn away help no matter what form it took. I said I was just what had to be done… it wasn’t anything special, what I did.”

“Only you would say that, Clint,” Romanoff muttered, before Phil could unstick his lips to do the same. He gave her a brief, grateful smile.

“Not only me,” Clint told her, and swallowed hard. Phil wondered if he was thinking about Jasper-- or about Romanoff herself. “Not only me. Anyway, he kinda laughed again and then he said… he said ‘whatever you were running from, Katrina wiped it away. All you took out of the flood was your own body and your own brain and whatever you want to make of that.’ And I said that was bullshit because my brain still had my memories.. and he said… he said…”

The pause went on long enough this time that Phil thought maybe Clint was done talking. When he finally did continue, his voice was suspiciously thick.

“He said ‘yeah, but memories only have the weight you give ‘em. Let the flood have ‘em and to hell with it. Don’t let that stop you-- you figure out where you want to be, and you go get it.’”

Romanoff’s eyes closed as Clint sniffled and took a deep breath.

“And eventually,” he said, “that’s what I did.”

It had an air of finality and it was threaded through with a note of relief, as if Clint had only just realized how heavy a burden he’d put down. Phil waited, letting the evening breeze dry the tears standing in the corners of his eyes, before he finally felt his head stop spinning. He sighed then and stood, making sure his legs would hold him before he turned. 

Clint was still standing in the blue shadows near the doorway, his sharp edges softened in the dark, his eyes as brilliant as the first time Phil had turned over in bed to find them watching him. Clint gave him a faint smile, and Phil felt his own lips pull upwards like reflex.  

“Thank you,” he said.

He let his hand rest for a moment on Clint’s shoulder, squeezing just to feel the heat and strength of him, as he passed into the darkness inside the little sunroom. He needed to be alone before he fell apart entirely.

Again, he figured, Clint would understand.

Behind him, he heard Romanoff rustle in her chair.

“What the hell was all that supposed to be about, Clint?” she asked in a harsh voice. 

“You’re a force of nature, but you’re not a goddamn flood,” Clint said, voice carrying like Natasha’s had, pitched to be heard both out on the balcony and behind him, inside in the stuffy little shed where Phil had retreated. Phil reached out and latched onto the rail of the staircase, grabbing until the wood bit into his palms and he was able to stop shaking. “Stop thinking you’re responsible for anything that happened to me.”

“If I’m not who is, Clint? If I hadn’t betrayed and abandoned you, would you have ended up in New Orleans just before the flood?”

“Eh,” Clint’s shadow, silhouetted against the lamplit night, shrugged. “No, but so what? You didn’t send me there; I went there my own self.”

“Then what is the point of the story?”

“Well, for one thing,” Clint said, “I figured if you didn’t know, it was just gonna fester. I get that now. I was gonna get more and more twisted up about what you’d do or say and you’d never know why. That… hasn’t been fair of me-- not to any of us. And if I didn’t tell you now, I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the guts.”

Phil winced, knowing that was meant as much for him as for Romanoff. If he was upright now, lurking in the darkness of the shed instead of sprinting down the stairs trying desperately to get somewhere private before the whole thing overwhelmed him, it was only because he didn’t think he could balance yet. Forgiveness was… heavy. It swamped everything it rolled over, especially, apparently, the Clint version of it.

“The second point is,” Clint said, and he left the doorway and went to lean over the chair Phil had vacated, his voice still carrying—still pitched to carry, to be honest, soft but resonant, “You can’t fight a natural disaster. All you can do is survive it-- and you did, and now you’re up on dry land.”

The creaking of the frogs was all Phil heard for a little while, and the rustling of leaves. And then Romanoff spoke, quietly, but matching her tone to Clint’s, letting it float.

“Which, apparently, is where the hard part starts.”

“Yeah,” Clint snorted. “Or didn’t you notice?”

Romanoff shifted in her chair. Neither of them seemed to be moving towards each other, or possibly even looking at each other—their faces were both turned forward into the night, away from Phil.

“I noticed,” she said. “But—your metaphor is falling down. I’m not trapped in some waystation, I’m not surrounded by water still. I don’t need your pity.”

“I know,” Clint told her, “I do. Some shiny-headed motherfucker got me to SHIELD. Some eyepatch asshole got you to stay, right? So I figure, whoever came up out of that water, she’s not the Tasha I knew anymore than the me that reached Natchitoches was the same me that went in to New Orleans. She deserves a fresh start same as I got. Right?”

“Clint—“ she said, then stopped, shaking her head and turning it towards him; Phil couldn’t see the expression on her face.

“Hi,” Clint said, reaching down. “I’m Clint Barton. I’m an Agent of SHIELD, and I’m a real jerk for not introducing myself sooner.”

During the long pause that followed, Phil caught his breath, waiting.  

After a long moment, Clint waggled his hand, and even in the darkness Phil was sure he was grinning, maybe mouthing  _ don’t leave me hanging. _

Slowly, Romanoff reached over and laid her hand in his.

“Hello, Clint,” she said, “I’m Natasha Romanoff. It’s good to meet you.”

“There you go,” he told her. “Glad to meet you too. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”

“So am I,” she said, idly, almost to herself. They were quiet for a long moment, before Clint leaned heavily over the chair.

“So hey,” he said, “Can I call you Nat?”

“ _ Nat _ ?” Phil was fairly sure he’d heard elderly upper crust women with pearls the size of marbles who couldn’t match the scandalized tone of Romanoff’s voice.

“Yeah,” Clint said, bubbly, “I think I like Nat.”

This time the quality of the silence was not at all hard to read—resignation rolled in through the balcony doors in waves.

“Fine,” she said at last. “But only you.”

\----

The early morning air was sweet and still a little damp, but so very, very light. Clint stretched in the hammock, setting it rocking as he rolled each joint and left his eyes closed. A parrot was chirping somewhere off to his right; probably the green fellow with a red and lilac cap that had been Clint’s wake-up call every morning he’d spent on the roof. He seemed happier today, more chirp than creak, or maybe it was that Clint’s mood had changed.

And oh, man, it  _ had _ changed. Clint had almost forgotten how good it could feel to wake up, the world in soft focus, the sun flowing over him rather than stabbing him in the face. He didn’t think it was just the after-effects of the rain; the light feeling had started last night, after his talk with Natasha-- with Nat.

The storm had come just as she was going in last night. Clint had crowded after her, seeing her into her room as rain pounded hard on the roof and windows, streaking the interior in silver and shadows. Coulson was already lying in the bed, at least pretending to be asleep. He was sprawled on the side next to the railing, one arm flung over the pillow next to him, as if saving a space. The cover looked red as new blood, and it tangled at his waist. His other hand rested just at his belly button, at the line between duvet and undershirt. 

In that moment, the dividing line between Phillip and Coulson seemed even more blurred than it had in the shower that afternoon. Clint had never had a chance to just study Coulson this way, not since Miami, and for a moment he wondered why Coulson’s face wasn’t settling into remembered patterns. There was something off-kilter about it…. 

When it hit Clint what it was, he nearly laughed out loud. In the intervening years, someone had broken Coulson’s nose, and it had set crooked. No wonder, no  _ wonder _ Clint had been able to delude himself so long; even Phillip’s face had broken and been reset with the passage of time. The wonder of it, truly, was how much Phillip was left in Coulson when he let himself show it.

Coulson shifted in his sleep, curling over onto his side, face sweet, and Clint knew he couldn’t crawl in and sleep with him. He had no resentment to protect him tonight; the invitation was too tempting. Accepting it felt wrong though, not when Clint hadn’t really truly answered Coulson’s confession. Clint hadn’t really earned it, not yet.

Hell, Clint wasn’t entirely sure he had the strength to earn it. 

He stayed where he was, gnawing his lip in indecision, until the rain finally passed, over as suddenly as it had come. After that Clint had gone outside, expecting overwhelming damp. Instead, everything felt fresh and calm. He pulled the the hammock out of the sunroom, hooked it onto the stand, and fell into it, watching the clouds retreat until he fell asleep.

It was a miracle, Clint thought, that the mosquitos hadn’t found him; he’d clearly slept right on to morning. Idly, he drifted one hand up to scratch at his neck, and brushed netting with his elbow. That made him open his eyes at last.

Sometime during the night, someone had come up and draped mosquito netting over the stand and, by proxy, Clint, and he was tented in a veil of it. Out beyond it, his friendly neighborhood parrot was sitting on the parapet, cracking seeds and watching him. Clint waved at the parrot then began pulling aside the netting so he could get up.

Was it Natasha, or Coulson, who’d put it there? They’d both seemed fast asleep by the time he went outside, though honestly he wouldn’t have blamed either of them for a restless night. One he’d caused, but whoever’d covered him clearly hadn’t been so resentful they’d wanted him to turn into a meal while he slept. 

Clint imagined Natasha doing it, all practicality, rolling her eyes a little, still putting up a tough front. Then he imagined Coulson doing it, and in his imagination, Coulson’s eyes were so soft. 

And why wouldn’t they be? If there was one damn thing Clint had learned yesterday, it was that Coulson still remembered Miami fondly enough that he’d been willing to make all kinds of horrible decisions in order not to ruin his memory of it. His memory of Chris-- well, Clint. 

No, Clint decided, even for the sake of preserving this glorious morning he couldn’t just leave things where they were. He still owed Coulson that something more, that something he didn’t think anyone else could give him. Even if it destroyed them both.

“But maybe,” Clint said out loud, standing and starting to move towards the parrot, “maybe it can wait a minute or two, yeah, birdie?”

The parrot cocked his head, clearly contemplated responding to Clint, then looked beyond him. With a kind of offended creak, the parrot took off. Clint turned around.

“Good morning,” Nat said from the doorway. “Can you come down? We’ve got fresh intel.”

“Yeah?” Clint asked, straightening up in answer to the look on her face. “They finally give us a fucking timeline?”

“Yes,” Nat said, grimacing. “The meeting is this afternoon. And you’re not going to believe where they finally found Labanzov.”

“The way this op is going?” Clint asked as he gathered up the netting, “I’m guessing the literal banana boat?”

“Close,” Nat said, “he booked passage on a small cargo ship, docking this afternoon. I assume one does not, however, ship bananas  _ to _ Mexico.”

“Too bad,” Clint said, “I’ve always wanted to ride on a banana boat. Well, all right. Let’s finish this fucking op, huh?”

They went inside, down the stairs towards Coulson, breakfast, and their mission.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: In this chapter, Clint describes his experience in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. It includes graphic descriptions of the flooding and aftermath, including survivors trapped in a nursing home after the flood. 
> 
> Reference notes: [Here](http://danswenson.com/paper/katrinagraphics/02how-much-water.pdf) is a decent map of the flooding during Katrina, for reference. I truly wish I could say that I had pulled the story of the nursing home from only one source, because that would mean it only happened to one place. Sadly, at quite a few different nursing homes didn't evacuate in time, and all had similar stories. Clint's nursing home, its people, and what happened in it, are fictional.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strike Team Delta clears a little more air, completes their mission, and questions Nick Fury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has content warnings for aftermath of a disaster, please check the end notes.
> 
> And thank you, those of you who read this while it was updating. Your comments have meant a hell of a lot.

"I do like it up here," Clint said, sighing and setting down his bow. He wasted a moment looking out over the low parapet on the roof to the narrow harbor, water blindingly blue in the high sunlight. Behind them two cranes creaked in the breeze; Clint had considered setting up on one of them for about three seconds before Coulson had asked how he’d get  _ down _ . 

Clint had pointed to his grappling arrow.

Coulson had expressed his lack of conviction in that as a suitable response, and since Coulson had to be up there with him to set up their surveillance equipment, Clint had given in.

"I would hope so, given how often you get put on rooftops," Coulson responded, collapsing down next to him and beginning to fiddle with the receiver, twisting wires onto connections. "Sniper would be an unfortunate career choice for someone with a fear of heights."

"Yeah probably," Clint matched him action for action, deliberately laying out his compound bow then loading his arrowheads into the quiver with little clicks. "But it’s kinda the other way around. I mean, I think I decided on sniper because I like it up here. On rooftops."

Coulson paused a little, wire in hand, and said "huh," before getting back to work. 

"Gonna ask me why?" Clint prodded when the silence had gone on a while-- it was a companionable sort of silence, but he was aware that Coulson was just as tense underneath it as he was. 

He didn't think he'd fooled anyone when he'd not-so-casually co-opted Coulson to come set up the eavesdropping equipment on the roof while Natasha shadowed Tularev. They still hadn’t had confirmation from SHIELD that the meet was going to be in the building, but Tularev had been hard at work in it the past few days, and Natasha had radioed earlier to let them know he was on his way. 

It was their best bet, at any rate, and Coulson wasn’t up here  _ just _ because Clint had to have a quiet talk with him, before he lost his nerve. Or before they got back to the States and maybe stopped talking to each other. At least while the op was live, Clint knew Coulson had incentive not to run away from him.

And Clint would’ve run away, if he could have, from the story he was about to tell. 

"Are you going to say something stupid like you see better from a distance?" Coulson asked, sounding a little nettled, and Clint was contrite for a half-second. The request had set him on edge, though Clint wasn’t sure why.

_ What's he expect me to do to him after yesterday, anyway? Go all soppy? Or worse yet, yell at him some more for… for having PTSD or something? Jesus fuck, Phillip. C'mon. _

Clint hadn't had time to get used to this idea that Phillip... that Coulson... was as lastingly fucked up as he himself was, and even worse at talking about it. Not yet, anyway-- and might not ever, really. 

"Yeah that's not it," Clint said, "and it's not so I get, huh, distance from the target either. Emotionally or for safety or whatever, I mean. For me, anyway, it’s easier to be right up there in the mix, where you  _ know  _ what you did and why you did it and you can take the consequences right away if they're gonna happen. Ya know?"

"I know," Coulson said, and twisted a wire viciously. 

"Thing is," Clint said slowly-- and it was amazing, just how fascinating the fletching on his shafts were, how much close attention they called for, to make sure every little edge was lying just right-- "thing is, I do that too much-- go in too fast, I mean. And it’s way too easy to punch first and think later, when you're right up close. So...." 

He shrugged and looked up, drinking in the city in the distance, bright-roofed and still steaming gently as the dew evaporated in the hot morning air. 

"So you like distance, because it gives you time not to do something stupid?" Coulson asked, dropping his pliers and looking up. "How's that working out for you?"

"Doesn't always stop me," Clint told him, feeling the grin come wry, "but it does slow me down. At least twice in my life now that it hasn't slowed me down enough." 

Coulson caught his glance-- or he caught Coulson's. Anyway someone caught someone’s eyes and for a minute Clint couldn't get free.

"I'm not apologizing for either of them," he told Coulson, and it came out soft on the air.

"I didn't ask you to," Coulson replied. 

And that was true. Even through all the bloody mess in Budapest and the screaming (Clint's screaming) that had followed, Coulson hadn't once asked Clint to apologize for  _ going _ to Natasha, only for not trusting him and Jasper.

Grace and understanding weren’t exactly things Clint’d experienced a lot in his life. Figured that when he did get them, they came all hidden within a massive pile of fucked-up. Still--  _ still _ . Grace was grace, even if you had to go through a mountain of shit to get it, and a whole hell of a lot of what he’d gotten had come courtesy of the man he was talking to.

"I know you didn’t. And thank you, Phil." Clint said the name deliberately, not waiting for a reaction. Continuing to use his last name suddenly seemed really stupid. Like he could some how erase the connection between  _ Phil _ and  _ Phillip _ if he just ignored the name. And they were equals now, right? And anyway it was kinda absurd to pretend you could call a guy who’d shared a massacre with you by his last name -- and it would only get absurder after what Clint was about to do. 

"What are we doing here, Clint?" Phil asked. The question came up short, like he wasn't sure he wanted the answer. 

"You told me a story yesterday." 

"I did." Phil shifted forward on his haunches, wary as a rabbit-- or maybe a cat. Something getting ready to jump, but Clint wasn't sure if he thought he was prey or predator.

The shafts were all in the quiver now, locked and ready for use, and Clint thumbed a couple of the most likely heads into place. The quiver was still a prototype, according to Fury, special made on a contract with Stark Industries. Clint was starting to understand the term  _ golden handcuffs _ , honestly-- Fury was in some ways worse than Phil’d been with the special things. It was just somehow different coming from him. At least Clint knew the whole point of these favors was to keep him loyal.

"I'm gonna tell you one back,” he said.

"I thought that you did that last night."

"Nah," Clint shook his head. "That was more for Nat, even though I wanted you to hear it to. But it wasn’t the whole thing. I left parts out that she really didn’t need to hear."

"And I do?"

"I don't know," Clint kept his tone frank, hoping it would settle Phil down a little. "But I've needed to tell it to Phillip for a while now, and there was never anyone else I wanted to tell." He glanced over. "So since you're here, and I’m here, and for once we’re, y’know…. I'm gonna do it before I chicken out."

"That's not..." In one moment about half of Phil's wariness was gone. He turned white, then kinda red-splotchy, before recovering himself. "Clint... I'm not... you don't owe me. For anything I said yesterday or for anything we… I… for anything."

"Kinda do, Phil,” Clint said. At any other moment it would have been fascinating, discovering that Phil was just as clueless how overwhelming he could be as Phillip had been, how he could stop your heart dead with his trust when he gave it. Clint risked derailing himself in all kinds of inconvenient memories if he stopped to think about it now. 

“But I'm not doing this because I owe you, it’d be a shitty way to pay that back, lemme tell you,” he said. “Just… I thought about telling you-- well Phillip-- about it pretty much… pretty much since it happened really. I don’t have-- well, I  _ don’t _ have a lot of people, and I had no one then, and you, or how I remembered you… how I imagined you…. Fuck.”

That was also not a road Clint could afford to go down-- Phil didn’t need to deal with just how much of a daydream he’d been to Clint all those years. There was baring your soul, and then there was sheer self-destructive idiocy.

“I thought  _ you  _ would understand, the you I’d known. That, um. If we’re being real honest here, that’s half of why I was so mad when I found out… uh, but that’s not the point." Clint was aware he was starting to babble, but didn't think he could stop himself now. "Thing is, I kinda built it up in my head. Phillip would know. Phillip would listen, if he were here. He'd get it, he'd tell me...." 

And that finally stopped him cold. Because Phillip  _ was _ here, sitting right in front of him listening to all this inanity, and Clint actually had no idea what he was going to say or do.

Phil was staring at him now, wide-eyed, definitely pale, and he looked around like help would come crawling over the parapet. But it was two hours to showtime; Clint was keeping close track. He had figured they were both gonna need a little time, after. 

"Oh." Phil said. The word was so small it was almost not there. 

Clint waited for more, trying not to watch Phil too closely while he did. He opened his hands and stared down helplessly at the palms instead, tracing his lifelines as he tried to place Phillip and Natasha, SHIELD and  _ Phil _ , in the cracks and turns.

At last, Phil shifted again.

"What... do you want? From me?"

Clint blew out his breath. 

"Right now? I want to tell you the... the rest. Of the story. And I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

"Yeah," Clint spat, more pissed off at himself, at the nausea he already felt welling up, than at Phil. "’Cause the only reason I’m doing this  _ now _ is we’re on a timeline so I have to sack up-- and then we gotta forget about it for a bit. But I know it’s gonna suck for you to hear, ‘cause it sucked for me to live… hell you’re better off without it,” he paused a moment, staring at his feet until he could bring his voice back under control. “I know I would be. But doesn’t sound like you got a choice anymore than I did. And anyway if I don't start, I'm gonna... I'm not gonna… um….”

This was it, the edge of the roof. And he didn’t have a line. Clint took a deep, shuddering breath, and prepared to jump.

“Do you know what it smells like? When old people die?" he asked.

Well, okay, so it wasn’t the ideal way to introduce the topic. Clint didn’t exactly have  _ it was the best of times, it was the worst of times _ in him regarding this.

"Like shit," Phil said succinctly, and slumped down against the parapet. 

Clint nearly kissed him for it. He'd called it right, after all-- that Phil would know what he needed and how to listen right, when he heard the clinical, detached tone in Phil's voice as he continued: 

"Shit and piss, and--"

"-- and this weird, sweet smell," Clint finished for him, as Phil faltered to try and explain it. He felt Phil's nod more than saw it. "Like they're decaying inside out, huh?"

"Yeah," Phil said. "Yeah, I remember. We had… after the massacre, we set up a makeshift hospital. I was there most days… there were a few people who... lingered."

"That. That’s… yeah." Clint said, and forced himself to push on through the lump in his throat. "Lingered is what they did. And we didn't have any... we couldn't get transportation and we didn't have anything left for 'em-- medicine or food or machines or-- so. we'd, um, triaged. You know."

Phil did know. Phil'd told him as much, the day before. Clint closed his eyes against his memories, now getting all mixed up with images from some life he hadn't lived, of grandpas bleeding out on the sand. The sun warmed his eyelids. He breathed in, deep as he could, the clean wet air.

"I uh, I couldn't have done it,” Clint said. “What the nurses did. I mean, I sit here and feel sorry for myself, right, but they're the ones that made the calls. The, uh, the triage list. Like, most of the patients we kept in the rec room by day so they could... so we could keep 'em entertained and keep an eye on 'em easy. Wheeled ‘em into the first-floor rooms at night.

“But the ones....” His voice was cracking now, but he couldn’t let it stop him, “the ones we thought would go? We, um.  Rooms. We put 'em back in the rooms on the second floor and we'd go around-- we split the duties-- and, uh. Watched.” 

That was it. His voice wasn't going to work anymore for a minute. 

A hand came to cover his wrist, squeezing hard. 

"In your own time," Phil said, his voice so gentle, so utterly  _ Coulson _ . How had Clint ever thought it was Phillip he'd want to tell about this? That he'd want a fierce, overwhelming embrace while he talked, not Coulson anchoring him, tethering him to the present with his fingers firm at Clint's pulse point? 

"I mean, what I told Nat and you wasn't wrong," Clint continued when he could breathe again. "I mostly lifted shit and ran people off and uh entertained the patients, like doing trick shots with a little bow I made out of a tongue depressor. But I took my turn. We all did. Went up to sit by Rose... by the woman we took off oxygen. And the one... the ones where….”

Phil just sat there while Clint’s words ran down again, one thumb rubbing his pulse point, and Clint felt himself nodding, nodding, faster and faster till it turned back into words.

“You know what it's like watching someone starve in front of you 'cause you took out their feeding tube? 'Cause we didn't have any bags left and we tried, we  _ tried  _ to find more-- hell me'n Ed nearly got ourselves shot for looting a clinic-- but the coolers had failed and we..." 

Clint knew he was getting out of control, close to hyperventilating, but it was keep running or let the tears catch up. 

"We  _ let them die _ , Phil. The nurses had to go around and decide who they were gonna be able to keep alive and who we were gonna let die, and then we'd go sit with them and I'd do  _ tricks  _ for them. Cards, coins, anything to keep their minds off the fact that they were dying because no one was coming to help and no one would let our goddamn busses through! And we had to _ beg for body bags  _ but there weren't enough to go around. People were ready to hold you up for a fucking body bag."

He couldn't have opened his eyes now if he tried. Everything was wet, his face burned with tears, he was rapidly filling up with snot. If Clint hadn't seen Phil the same way yesterday he couldn't have managed it, would have thrown himself over the parapet to get rid of the sharp edge of embarrassment. 

But Phil held both his forearms now, so tight he was probably bruising them, and he tilted Clint forward, till the crown of his head was leaning against Phil's chest, the tears dripping down and dampening his belly and fly. 

"I hear you," he said softly. "I know. Clint, I know. I know."

He didn't, of course, not exactly. He couldn't-- Clint doubted he'd had to go begging for something to wrap his dead friends in, back in Afghanistan. But it was... it was close enough. Clint'd told Doc Heilman the story-- once. And not in such detail. It’d helped some, at least gave her more points to put on her mental map of Places Clint Barton is Fucked Up. 

Telling Phil was different. Fuck, it felt almost good to do it, the way it felt good to puke after eating something that'd gone bad-- and just as fucking messy and undignified. 

"And the worst part, the worst part?" Fuck it, Clint was just gonna let go and wail through it. "Was we were  _ lucky _ . Ed'n'me would go wading into places, looking for food, for supplies, and we'd see all the houses with the marks on 'em, or we'd see fucking bodies floating in the water... when we left, when we went out... god, Phil, the things we saw. I can’t-- I used to fucking kill people for a living, and I still can’t--”

Phil’s hands tightened briefly, and he murmured some kind of nonsense, while Clint gave up for a moment and just shook. When he started again, he was talking nearly into Phil’s neck, his forehead buried in the hollow between collarbone and jaw.

“I don't know how they fucking managed-- the nurses, the residents. 'Cause they all knew each other, and they knew-- I mean it was their family, their homes. Me, I was a stranger. Stranger to them, stranger to the city… I didn’t mostly know what I was losing, you know?”

Phil nodded, his cheek smooth against Clint’s, and he waited. And that was a blessing, too, that Clint couldn’t have imagined Phillip offering-- Phil’s infinite patience.

“I didn't know who’d walked which streets and who'd loved who and who'd had a bingo vendetta and who'd stole whose fruit cup last week. Or where they went for coffee or smokes, that they wouldn't be able to go to ever again. Ed'd point some place out, once in a while, or tell me some story about someone and their mom or cousin or dog-- but it didn't really register. And I feel kinda like… like it’s not fair for me to feel this fucking bad about it, ‘cause it’s not mine at all. I just wandered into someone else’s disaster and got stuck. And I wanna mourn with them, ‘cause I was there when New Orleans was destroyed, but I guess I never got to see it whole."

"You ever want to?" Phil asked.

Clint laughed in spite of himself.

"Fuck. No? I dunno."

He thought about it for a moment, whether it'd be better or worse to go back, to see what had been cleaned up... see if Ed was still around at all and if he still had that big old poodle who'd shadowed his steps. Go inside Tipitina’s see what was so damn special about it that Ed’d nearly cried in relief when he saw it undrowned. See if the nursing home was still there. If he could still see the faint traces of the marks they'd left, indicating  _ bodies inside _ , when they finally evacuated, or if all that would have been whitewashed away.

Maybe Clint wasn’t quite ready for it, at least not yet. 

But thinking about it had helped give him enough distance so he could pull himself back together. He sat back up and wiped his eyes, then nose, with the back of his hand, sniffling like a child.

"Sorry," he croaked.

"No," Phil said, and his voice was fierce. " _ I'm _ sorry. You don't ever get to be sorry for that."

"Yeah," it was wobbly, but at least it wasn't wet. He straightened up enough to look Phil in the face, see it twisted with worry. "Yeah I guess you deserved that, after yesterday."

Phil's laugh, cracked as it was, put another piece of Clint back together. 

"Fuck," he agreed. "Probably, yeah." And he pulled a handkerchief out of some damn pocket beneath his jacket, and handed it to Clint. 

\----

"Thank you, Clint" Phil said after a bit, once Clint had managed to restore himself to some semblance of order. He was faintly proud that he managed to say it without a wobble.

Clint looked up at him with that fierce stare, his face all screwed up for a minute.

“For what? Giving you new nightmares?”

“No,” Phil said, carefully folding the sodden handkerchief up and returning it to his pocket. “For trusting me with that.”

Clint snorted, still sounding snuffly enough that Phil nearly reversed direction on the handkerchief.

“That wasn't some fucking trust fall exercise.”

“I’m not saying it was,” Phil said, trying to gentle down the defensiveness that was starting to creep into Clint’s voice. He couldn’t afford to mess it all back up now, not after the price they’d both just paid in attempting to fix things. “You… I… I’m saying I know that you knew how much it meant to me… how much I needed to hear it. And, even if you felt you needed to get it out… I appreciate how hard it was to talk about.”

That got him something more like a chuckle, and Clint shrugged, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck. Much more Barton-standard; Phil’s heart started to unclench a little. 

“Don’t think anyone  _ needs _ to hear something like that,” he said. 

Phil took a deep breath, considering his words, before he replied.

“If you needed to tell it to… to me, yes I needed to hear it. But what I’m trying to say is, it helped. To know that… to know that someone else knows what the insides of my nightmares look like,” he paused on an airless laugh, because put that way it sounded so… gothic. “Not that either of us wanted membership in that club.”

Clint echoed his laugh.

“Woohoo, trauma buddies, yay,” he said, twirling his finger weakly. 

“Oh god,” Phil replied, grateful that Clint had recovered far enough to joke at all, “please tell me there isn’t a pledge.”

“Oh shit, maybe a secret handshake.” Clint’s shoulders were starting to shake again, but this time, at least, it seemed to be laughter doing it. Phil smiled back at him, starting to feel relief bubble up in him. Which was why Clint’s next words caught him so off-guard.

“Anyway, that’s it, right?” Clint asked. “I mean, you and I, we're even now? Unless you've still got something hidden in the back of your brain you think is gonna make me faint to hear."

Phil shook his head mutely, and even mostly meant it. (It wasn't his  _ brain _ that still bothered him from time to time about Clint. That still drove him crazy with memories dredged up at odd moments of the night, of golden skin arching below him, of Clint's breath hot on his shoulder in a cold desert night.)

"Good," Clint said. "Neither do I."

"Is that what you want?" Phil asked, feeling vaguely sick. “We…just go on like that was it? Trade horrible stories and it evens out somehow and we can… we can go back and make a… fresh start, like you did with Natasha?" 

He wasn’t entirely sure he could do it again, go back to where they had been. Not after hearing all that, not after sharing it. Not after being called  _ Phil _ , while Clint was leaning on him, crying.

"No," Clint glanced away, then back, looking determined. "That's not what I want. No more clean slates, no more fresh starts. Not between us. You saw how fucking well that worked last time.” 

“I really am sorry,” Phil whispered, looking at his own hands in preference to watching Clint. “That’s all my fault. If you… I can try, this time. I can’t promise much, but you do deserve it. Or if you need to just… have me go. I… I can try to talk to Fury about it again. Maybe this time…” Phil trailed off, the seasick creep of guilt trailing back into his gut. 

Clint poked him.

"Phil," he said, his voice so low Phil had to lean to hear it, “I said that’s not what I want.”

“But I-- Clint. I don’t want…”  _ I don’t want you to go _ , he thought. But that wasn’t Phil’s choice. Clint had more than reason to want to be finished with him, to let this be his bitter parting gift. Phil sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, trying to keep himself from begging.

“I wasn’t looking for sympathy. Do what you need to do. I’m not stupid enough to think I can erase everything I’ve done just by telling you a story,” he said. 

"Well, good, ‘cause you didn’t,” Clint told him. “But I think you’re holding way more shit over your own head than I ever would, okay?”

Phil nodded. He didn’t think he could speak. That, at least, didn’t sound  _ un _ promising.

“Okay,” Clint said. “I wasn't bullshitting you and Nat last night. I'm not holding whatever you thought you ought to have done in Afghanistan against you, any more than you would have let me feel guilty about shooting Farouk in the first place. You couldn’t have predicted Manshour’d bomb your village any more than I could’ve known the levee was gonna break. When the wave comes, you just ride it and survive and…” he paused, shrugging, as he fought for words. “And whatever it does to mess you up, whether that’s making you afraid to fucking talk to me, or whether it’s making you want to put a bullet in your brain? That’s just you still underwater.”

And then Clint looked up, meeting Phil’s gaze, and Phil’s breath caught. There was nothing in his face but compassion, deep enough Phil didn’t think he’d seen something like it since Nick had sat next to him in his barren bedroom and taken the gun out of his hands.

“You’re not responsible, Phil,” Clint said. “Not for the fact that people got hurt. Not for the fact that  _ you _ got hurt, that you’re still hurt.”

“I know,” Phil whispered, “I’ve been told.” Which was only partly true, because yes he’d been told, again and again, but hearing it from Chris’s mouth-- from  _ Clint’s _ \-- with all the weight of his own horror story behind it, was somehow hearing it for the first time. 

“Well I’ll keep telling you until you believe it,” Clint said, sounding slightly frustrated. 

“Will you?” Phil asked, unable to stop the wistful note in his voice. 

“Fuck, Coulson.” Clint ran his hands down his face, like he was starting to crack again and needed to push himself back together. “That’s not fair. Man, now I’m the one fucking this up.”

Phil felt himself start crack again, too. How long did they have, before the ship came in and they had to work? Even if it were years, would it be long enough to recover from this conversation? 

“Look,” Clint huffed and straightened up, side-eying Phil as if he thought he might have to run, "I didn't actually think I'd get to see Phillip again, you know? See  _ you _ again. And... anything I imagined, right, I didn't really realize..." 

He'd imagined? What had he imagined? Phil nearly lost the thread right there, although Clint was fumbling enough himself for words that he managed to pick it back up before he missed anything vital. 

"I didn’t realize how much it’d mean to… you’d changed so much,” Clint said, waving a hand up and down to indicate Phil’s whole… Philness, he supposed, “and I think I resented that more’n anything else. That, that you were too different for me to recognize you were… Phillip or that Phillip was… was Coulson.” 

“I’m sorry,” Phil said again, helplessly.

“Eh, my own fault. I’m the one who was too busy staring at your-- um.” Clint stopped for a moment, biting his lip, before going on, “Who was too wrapped up in what I… in my blurry mental image of you to see what was plain as the nose on your face. But that isn’t your fault, that’s… shit, that’s just what happens when your life changes. Okay?”

“Okay,” Phil said, beginning to feel like a parrot. Maybe Clint’s little lavender-capped green one. He could live in hope that Clint might have tolerate him that way, look at him with….

Actually, with the kind of fondness that Clint was looking at him with right now.

“Thing is?” Clint said, “I liked Agent Phil Coulson, too. He was… I wasn’t sure what he was to me. But I liked him.”

“Then I’m sorry for taking him away from you, too,” Phil whispered.

“You didn’t.” Clint stopped for a moment, biting his lip, before going on. “Okay, I know this isn't what you maybe want to hear, and I get it if you just can’t… if it hurts too much or if you’re just not interested. But I want to see if we can… if we can try to pick that back up?”

“That--” It took Phil a moment to parse what he was hearing, and then he had to double-check. “Us? To pick… I don’t understand? Which… which part of, um, us?”

“Uh,” Clint said, looking blank for a moment. Phil tried to convince himself that he really was breathing, but his lungs weren’t buying the lie. “That’s the thing, I… I think maybe trying to do things in parts was part of the problem?”

Phil opened his mouth to say he was still lost, but Clint barrelled over him.

“And just, unless the idea just makes you sick, I want… I want to not do that anymore.” He paused, then, finally seeing the confusion Phil was radiating, and hurried to clarify: “I don’t want to do that thing where we pretend to each other that we never, um, that we don't have a history before SHIELD."

"A history?" Phil asked, because there was history and then  _ history,  _ and then sweaty nights in a mid-price hotel room-- and they were all different.

"I mean, what happened between M... between when we met and now," Clint said. "I don’t want to go back to pretending we’re just colleagues that met at SHIELD.”

“I’m not sure we could,” Phil said, faintly.

“Oh good,” Clint replied, and then, stronger, “good.”

“I’m still not sure what you want,” Phil confessed. “But whatever you want from me, I’ll do it.”

That shut Clint up for a moment, with a kind of glazed look on his face, and Phil finally reached out to poke his knee.

“That is a dangerous thing to say, Coulson,” Clint finally said, roughly. “But okay. I know you keep offering to go away, and if you’d really prefer that, I mean, I won’t stop you. So tell me if I’m getting any of this wrong.”

“I can do that,” Phil promised him.

“Right,” Clint nodded. “So, far as I can tell, you still think I should resent you or something for not, um, reintroducing yourself when I got to SHIELD. Or for a couple years after. Right?”

Phil nodded, wishing he could get Clint’s words flowing faster. Their time must be starting to run short, and he needed, badly, to hear the end of all this. Clint’s bitter twist of a smile told him that Clint understood that too.

“Well, thing is, I really don’t anymore,” Clint said.

“Oh good,” Phil said faintly.

“Maybe other people would, I don’t know,” Clint continued, “but the way I figure? You were kind of a dick about not saying anything when I got here, but I'm kind of a fuck up too. And like I said, I liked Phil Coulson. And I’d like to… I’d like to continue liking him. You. Whatever. And I really,  _ really _ like Strike Team Delta and I don’t think it’s the same with Victoria Hand.”

Phil hadn’t even thought about Victoria Hand in weeks. Now that he did, he decided he’d saw through her stiletto heels before he let her walk into Delta in his place.

“Now, we could do that like we used to, just teammates, nothing more,” Clint said, wrinkling up his nose in distaste. “If you want to, I can do that. But man, Phil, I’d… I'd just like to _ talk _ to you without having to shut off the past.” Clint’s voice was high and nervous as he asked. “We don’t have to really be trauma buddies or anything, but it… it’s weird how much it helps to know that there’s someone who knows what… who knows. Is… is that okay?"

Was that okay? Was it? 

If Phil said yes, there was clearly never going to be any pretending he was objective about Clint Barton again. But that... well, that was a foregone conclusion. And the outside world didn't have to know, as Clint himself said. They were supposed to be equals, now. No one would even question a changing relationship, with all the stumbling at the start that went with it.

And he wouldn’t have to hide anymore-- well. He wouldn’t have to hide  _ much _ . 

Oh, it was so tempting. 

To be allowed to see, talk to, the entire man, not just Agent Barton the operative. To be allowed a tiny space somewhere in Clint’s huge heart-- for  _ all _ of him to be allowed that. 

It was terrifying too, of course-- Phil’d gotten so used to being walled-off he wasn’t sure what it would feel like not to be.

Clint must have mistaken his silence for... well for something. Phil wasn’t sure what.

"I know it's, um, I know it could look… bad. I promise I'm not trying to take advantage, I just..."  _ want a friend who's been there _ Phil thought, and nearly cried himself that apparently Clint felt he needed to caveat that. "Like I said, no one else has to know. It doesn't have to get messy."

Hah. Oh, it was going to get  _ so _ messy, no chance of escaping it. It already was.

"I don't mind mess," Phil said out loud, surprising himself a little. 

"Yeah?" Clint asked, and a little bit of hope peaked out at the corner of his eyes.

Phil shrugged, as helpless suddenly as he'd been years ago, and oh god, this could lead to hitherto unfathomed depths of mess. But:

"Not when it's worth it," Phil said, and blew his breath out. "And I agree. This will be worth it."

“Oh.”  Phil watched a startled smile begin to spread across Clint’s face, finally driving away the last of the shadows leftover from his story. “Oh. I. Well. That. All right, then.”

“But I think we should seriously consider a secret handshake,” Phil said, just before being overcome by an extremely shaky series of laughs. 

Clint leaned over and put his forehead on Phil’s shoulder, joining in.

They were both still laughing when Natasha’s voice crackled to life on their comms.

“Gentlemen, we are fucked,” she announced.

“What’s wrong?” Phil asked as his smile slid off his face. Beside him, Clint was already grabbing for his bow.

“We’re in the wrong place. Tularev just got in a speedboat. They’re not meeting here. Moreover, according to what Agent Morse just sent me, they’re--”

“Meeting on the cargo ship?” Phil asked, groaning, and barely even waited for Natasha’s affirmative. “Of course they are. Where’s the nearest boat we can requisition that will be fast enough to--”

“Got you covered,” Clint said, staring off down the harbor. Phil looked over at him for guidance, and Clint nodded at a little fleet bobbing in the port next door. 

“Oh god,” Phil said. “You don’t mean--”

“Oh come on,” Clint said, already starting to move, “they’re perfect. And besides, you didn’t get to do anything touristy with us yesterday.”

“Clint,” Natasha sighed, “you can’t mean--”

“Come on,” Clint said, “trust me.”

Phil closed his eyes, looked at the fleet of little yellow boats, and back at Clint, whose eyes were far more solemn than his voice.

“Okay,” Phil said. “Okay.”

\----

“What I don’t get,” Felix Blake said as he sat staring at the three of them thirty-six hours later, “is how you’re all still alive.” 

“I’m fairly certain that’s not an officially sanctioned debrief question,” Phil told him, leaning against the back of his chair and lacing his hands behind his head. Natasha nearly shot a quick look at his ribs to make sure he hadn’t reopened anything, but stopped herself when she caught Clint there before her.

“I’m fairly certain you can stick it up your--” Blake started, going red, and stopping himself as the door to the conference room opened and Agent Morse slipped inside, her arms full of clothing-- including boots, thank heavens. Natasha had never liked the wedge-heeled espadrilles she’d picked up in Mazatlan, and had been only too glad to leave them wedged an the engine room door. 

“Thank you,” she said, taking her bundle, and then turning back to Blake. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get out of this mess before the blood makes it too stiff to take off.” 

Morse paused as she was handing a pile of clothing to Phil, in order to look back at Natasha and smirk. It was the look of someone who was also aware of the effects of motor oil and drying bodily fluids on spandex. Natasha was unsurprised to find Morse following her into the viewing room behind the conference room, where she could watch and listen through one-way glass as she changed in private. 

Back in the conference room, Phil and Clint apparently had no such compunctions, as Phil stripped out of the remnants of his guayabera and exchanged it for a t-shirt as Blake watched him biliously. Clint had lost his shirt in the melee anyway, so the only thing decorating him was a large bandage across his left shoulder. He’d managed to wrangle his t-shirt halfway on using just his right hand, when Phil turned to him and grabbed the other half, rucking up the sleeve of the tee so Clint could slip his hand through. 

Morse watched them both silently, looking over only when Natasha dumped the last of her ruined clothing on a narrow table before them. 

“Feel better?” she asked, and Natasha allowed that she did. 

“And you?” she asked in return, since Morse had been on the go for at least 18 of those 36 hours, part of the backup team dispatched by Agent Gonzalez in San Diego. It had come screaming in by quinjet in time to take part in the final stages of Strike Team Delta’s hijacking of the cargo ship Labanzov had been on-- a hijacking made necessary as soon as Natasha had found out that nearly all the passengers and more than half the crew were part of one criminal enterprise or another. 

“I… survived,” Morse said, shaking her head. “I’m kind of with Blake, although what I really want to know is how you three didn’t kill each other. I mean, no offense, but back in San Diego you looked ready to toss Clint overboard.”

“It worked itself out,” Natasha said, a little ashamed to have been so transparent. 

“I see that,” Morse sighed. “Banana boats, though?” 

“Clint’s idea,” Natasha said. “Look like lost tourists.”

“It… sounds like something he would do.” 

Natasha couldn’t tell if Morse was impressed or not.  _ She _ was-- impressed and thoroughly amused, both. There was nothing utilitarian about Clint, he did everything with a flourish. Natasha found it very reassuring. But Morse didn’t really need to know this.

They watched Clint again as he leaned forward and shook his head at Blake.

“Wasn’t my idea at all-- it was his,” he was saying, jerking his thumb at Coulson. “You can go back to the transcripts from the comms. ‘Hey, Barton, what’s the quickest way off this building?’” 

“Oh god they didn’t--” Morse muttered, a hand over her mouth. “He always did--”

“Coulson seemed fine with it,” Natasha told her. This was an understatement; the comms transcript would show that after an initial gasp as they went over the roof together, Clint’s arm around Phil’s waist, Phil had  _ chuckled _ as they rappelled down the building, twisting as the wind hit them. At the bottom, Natasha was sure she’d heard his faint thank you. There were likely far more rooftop escapes in Delta’s future, she decided.

“-- concerned about some of the statements you made to the medics,” Blake was saying.

“Which ones?” Phil asked, leaning forward, and both Natasha and Morse cocked their heads to listen.

“When they asked about the wounds on your forearms, you said you and Barton had, and I quote, ‘become blood brothers’?” Blake asked, and Phil shook his head.

“No, that’s inaccurate,” Phil said, to Blake’s evident relief. “It was all three of us.”

“Wh--” Blake started, staring at him.

“We were bleeding enough by then anyway,” Clint said, taking over, “seemed a shame to waste it.”

“You didn’t,” Morse looked over at Natasha, who tapped one of the bandages on her own wrist. “Was that Clint’s idea? What am I saying,” she turned back to the window and looked out, “of course it was.”

“It was Coulson’s,” Natasha said, mostly to see her double-take. 

She’d decided she liked Bobbi Morse much better now, on second viewing, than she had in San Diego. Morse’s chagrin and exhaustion seemed to be mixed in with a little regret. Possibly it was regret for her relationship with Clint, possibly it was that she was no longer part of one of Phil Coulson’s teams, or possibly it was something that had nothing to do with any of that. 

“I had better get back in there,” she said gently after a moment, and Morse nodded.

“Yeah, before they think you fell asleep in here.”

“I’d never do something that human,” Natasha told her, and got a chuckle.

“You could; I wouldn’t tell,” Morse said, then paused, before rushing on. “I-- look. We don’t know each other but… thank you.”

“For what?” Natasha asked, and got a shrug in return.

“For taking care of Clint,” Morse said. “He… he’s a fuck-up sometimes, personally, I know, and I thought you guys used to… well okay, not my place to think. But as an agent, he was always great and with you? It’s like he’s on another level.”

“It wasn’t me,” Natasha told her, “and he doesn’t need looking after--” at least no more than any of the three of them did-- “but thank you all the same. It is,” and here the pause was because it hit her how true it was, “my pleasure.” 

“Okay,” Morse said, measured and perhaps a little skeptical. “But I bet you still want some downtime without them soon, right?”

Good lord did she; even as exhilarating as it had been when Strike Team Delta finally clicked, when she became  _ Nat _ and Clint and Phil dropped last names like they’d been hit with a sudden case of patronym-specific amnesia, when working together turned from competitive trust-building to a true partnership, she had to admit it had been exhausting. 

Not just the unexpectedly action-packed finale to a long and wearing op either; the emotional toll that clearing the air between the three of them had exacted was heavy. It was also, she knew, only a start. There were exhausting times to come as they all found the boundaries of their new lives. Natasha was already tired; she didn’t really need to see the other two for a little while.

“Well,” Morse said, reading her silence accurately, “if you’re looking for somewhere else to be that’s not alone, I can give you my room number. We can hang out. Just low-key.”

“Can we?” Natasha asked, surprised at the note of enthusiasm in her own voice. Perhaps Morse just wanted more gossip, either to reassure herself about Clint or for it’s own sake. Either way, the prospect of not being alone was tempting.

“Yeah sure,” Morse said. “Room service, painting nails, the whole deal-- hey, what do you think about Star Wars?”

Or maybe, just… maybe, on the fringes of possibility, Morse was genuinely trying to be  _ friends _ . Clint, Phil, and her therapist had all mentioned the possibility at one point or another. Phil and her therapist encouragingly, Clint… not so much, but that bitterness was in the past.

“My understanding is that it was never really feasible given the existing technology,” Natasha frowned. 

“No,” Morse stuttered, blinking at her. “Not the, uh…. I meant the movie. Movies. Do you like them?”

“Oh. I don’t know yet,” Natasha said slowly. “But I’d like to find out.”

\----

“Got a minute?” Nick Fury asked, leaning on the door to Phil’s office.

Phil looked up from the stack of papers on his desk and blinked. 

“Make yourself at home,” he said, waving a hand invitingly at his visitor chairs and couch, “if you can find room.”

Fury looked around at the go-bags lying half-unpacked on the couch, something sticking out of one that could have been a t-shirt but Phil was fairly sure was actually underwear. Deciding to ignore that, Fury turned to the visitor chair and poked at the pile of papers perched on it. They promptly slid off onto the floor.

“I haven’t had much time to keep up on filing lately,” Phil said, watching Fury. “Barely been around.”

“Yeah, I know,” Fury sounded smug, “just how I like it. If I need your desk clean, Phil, I can get someone to do it for you.”

“Warn me before you do,” Phil sighed, “so I can leave them a bottle of something nice. Or maybe I’ll just put a post-it on the single malt Pierce sent. What did you need?”

“Talked with Pierce about Delta,” Fury said, “and he gave me his condolences.”

“He… what?” Phil asked, dropping the papers he’d been trying in vain to find a place for and looking up. “Why? Did we-- we achieved all our objectives, Nick, you know we did. Was it the cargo ship? I know Labanzov’s not the issue; was it the holding company? Did they have ties to someone?”

“Not as far as I know,” Nick said, laughing. “No, he doesn’t mean shut you down-- though mind you, this is not the nice quiet below-the-radar entry onto the scene he assumed I had planned for you all. He’s impressed. He does think you’re liable to explode, though. Especially after the banana boats.”

“If that’s what got to him, he clearly hasn’t been paying attention.” Phil watched as Nick sat down in the now-empty visitor’s chair and proceeded to put his boots up on Phil’s desk, displacing several confidential security briefings and a half-dead spider plant. “And the banana boats were a really inspired choice, I thought. No one expects a boarding party to arrive via large yellow pleasure craft. Clint deserves all the credit for that.”

“I’ll tell him so. You two finally cleared the air, huh?” 

For a moment, Phil debated telling Nick it was none of his business. But not only would that be completely untrue, Phil couldn’t figure out why the question had raised his hackles in the first place. So he forced himself to sound calm, and answered:

“That’s one way to put it. I did tell him about Manshour, anyway. You were right; he deserved to know.”

“Looks like it can’t have gone too badly,” Nick said, and Phil was grateful he didn’t say anything stupid like  _ see, wasn’t as hard as all that _ . In retrospect, Phil was fairly sure that there’d been actual torture that had been slightly less difficult for him to endure.

“I think we came to an understanding,” Phil replied, and that at least was true. He wasn’t sure he and Clint were friends yet, anymore than he and Natasha were. Phil thought half the insanity of their last mission just came down to release of nerves-- he definitely blamed their newly-acquired blood brother status on that, although he was still astonished Natasha had agreed to it. “And… I think we’ll get there. Given time.”

“You jumped off a rooftop with him, Phil, how much more time do you need?” 

Phil shrugged.

“I’ve always wanted to try it; no reason Clint should have all the fun without me.” The speculative look in Nick’s eyes made Phil uneasy, and he changed the topic. “What’re you here for, Nick? I’m supposed to be on downtime in… five minutes ago. Some guy calling himself the Director of SHIELD ordered it.”

“The Director of SHIELD needs your opinion on a couple things, like when you think Barton and Romanoff will be ready to run without you.”

“Without--” Phil swallowed down the sudden bout of nausea. “But… why? We’ve barely started! I thought you wanted me back in the field?”

“I do,” Nick sighed, and looked down at his boots. “And I’m not taking you off Delta, Phil. But I do need you to think about when they’ll be ready for solo missions, or missions without you. I…” he trailed off.

“Nick?” Phil asked, and leaned forward on his desk. Something was playing across Fury’s face that he didn’t recognize, and he’d had a lot of time to memorize Fury’s common expressions. 

“The world is getting weird,” Fury said finally, looking back up at him. “Weirder. And I didn’t realize the extent to which Weird Stuff worked because your brain is wired up strange. Right now I need you to get Romanoff and Barton in fighting shape, but I can’t afford to let you run around jumping off buildings and locking international criminals in the bilges forever, Phil. Hell, I thought that was your argument to me not so long ago.”

“Yes but,” Phil started, then bit his lip before he could finish it  _ but I like being in the field _ .  _ I like being part of the team.  _ And maybe that, for him, more than the blood brotherhood, was the difference with Delta at the end of this last op-- that somehow he’d forgotten to be afraid he was going to fail everyone. 

It was a heady feeling, one he could easily get addicted to.

“It’s not yet,” Fury said gently, clearly reading Phil’s mind again. “Might be a matter of months, might be a matter of years, till I gotta take you back. It’s not just that Weird Stuff needs watching; you came in to watch my back, help me clean this place up. You think that’s all done?”

Phil wished he could have said yes.

“SHIELD can’t help but be shady, it’s a spy agency,” Fury continued when it was clear he wasn’t going to get an answer. “I gotta have my guy. But. Right now? Literally the most important thing you can do for me is be friends with Barton and Romanoff, so thank you for managing to finally pull your head out of your ass.”

“I wasn’t sure I could, or that it wouldn’t make things worse,” Phil confessed. “But it was getting to the point, after so long stuck in small spaces together, where we were either going to destroy half of Mexico accidentally or, well--”

“Blood brothers?”

“Blood brothers,” Phil affirmed. “Why was it so important to you that we get along?”

“You’re teammates.”

“I’d noticed. You’re the one that made us teammates. The question stands.”

Fury considered a moment, looking down at his feet and letting them waggle on top of Phil’s paperwork as he did. Phil wondered whether Accounts Payable would accept invoices with the Director’s bootprint in lieu of his signature. 

“I’ll answer that question once you tell me why Clint’s so important to you, Phil.”

… Or maybe Accounts Payable would accept the signature of a Director with Phil’s bootprint on his ass as Phil kicked him out the door. 

“I feel like we’ve had this conversation several times. In fact, I know we have,” Phil sighed. “I’m not sure there’s anything new to be said.” That he was willing to say to anybody but Clint, anyway.

“Humor me,” Nick said. 

Phil shrugged, and settled into his old and practiced Litany on the Excellent Qualities of Clint Barton, the Safe For Work version.

“He’s a great sniper, of course, smart-- and doesn’t hide it as well as he thinks. Quick on his feet, flexible, takes his chance when he sees it, open to the changing nature of possibility, loyal to his teammates, astoundingly quick to forgive--” and then Phil stopped short, because he’d been wrong.

There was something new to say on the topic, after all.

“See, Phil, that’s your problem,” Nick said, and Phil looked up. He was calm still, amused, not looking too much like the spider who’d caught the fly-- which didn’t keep Phil from feeling distinctly trapped. “You’re way too close to Clint to see him clear.”

“Wh--” Phil said, before biting his lip to shut himself up. He had no proof that Nick meant  _ close _ in the way Phil thought of it, close like Phil curled up against Clint in a dingy shower in Mazatlan and crying, like Clint shaking in Phil’s arms in Arizona, like Phil slipping in and out as Clint sighed beneath him in Mi…. 

That thought had gone on entirely too long, and Phil’s entire face had flushed.

“Huh,” Nick said, and then leaned forward. “Cheese? Am I missing something?”

“I thought I was the one missing something,” Phil said, trying to keep himself from snapping, which would only give Nick proof.

“Hrmph. You’re missing a screw or two. Look, what I mean is, you’ve forgotten something about Clint Barton-- and Natasha Romanoff, incidentally. You’re telling me he’s excellent, but I’m gonna tell you now, he’s  _ exceptional _ .”

“Well, yes, there’s no one who can--”

“I don’t mean his goddamn aim, Phil. Or her espionage capabilities. If that were it, if they were just really good, top of the class, field agents, I wouldn’t have stuck them with you. I wouldn’t have shoved you all out in the field and made you all keep running until you were too exhausted to be mad at each other. I want them to be self-sufficient, I want them to rely on each other more than they rely on anyone at SHIELD-- but I need ‘em to want to keep coming back. Which is why I want them getting tied to you, frankly.”

“As bait to keep them loyal to SHIELD?” Phil leaned forward. “I am a weird choice for that, Marcus.”

“They need a weird choice. I mean look at them,  _ really _ look at them, and tell me if any self-respecting director of any other alphabet agency-- CIA or NSA or fucking INTERPOL-- would want those two on their payroll. The two of them are really fucking awkward fits for a spy organization, in their own ways. And you know why, Phil.”

“I do?” Phil asked, and Nick rolled his eye. He didn’t bother with a verbal answer. 

What the hell Fury thought Phil saw, he wasn’t sure. After all, he was the one who’d wanted Clint for SHIELD so badly he had gone out of his way to find him and get Fury to send Jasper out. Clearly he’d felt Clint could be an asset, with his aim and his intelligence. Even too young and too desperate and too inexperienced, Clint had still been able to shift plans on the fly to save a soldier who’d gotten caught in the middle of his fight, and he had been so determined to understand what he was being asked to do, to make his own choices about what sins he took on his head-- oh.

Good lord, looked at it that way, Clint was a  _ horrible _ fit for an organization that thrived on compartmentalization. 

And Natasha, well, it took little to see why gaining her skills would weigh little against the possibility that she might turn on them, might not know she was doing it, to most Directors. The fact that Phil was morally certain that she’d kill herself rather than let herself be used like that again, that she would never again allow herself to be used for ends she didn’t understand, wouldn’t mean anything to most agencies. They’d never have allowed her to the kind of freedom Fury was, if they’d taken her on at all.

But it had been worth the risk in both cases; Phil didn’t need his late experience on the banana boat to prove that, and Fury’d always seen further with his one eye than most agency heads did with two. 

“They’d have ripped Victoria Hand to shreds,” Phil mused after a moment. “Without even meaning to.”

“Well, yes,” Nick said. “Once they got going, anyway. But that’s still not quite what I mean. Phil-- you and I, we’ve done our time in the military, more or less. You know what I always hated about that shit most? Coming home. Not the reunions and hugs, but the parades. The parades and the flags and the stadium tours. Never felt like it was me they were referring to when they talked about heroes. It was some ideal upright billboard-gracing jarhead.”

“Right,” Phil sighed. Nick didn’t talk a lot about their shared past, for many a good reason, but he remembered a version of this conversation the same day Nick had offered him a job at SHIELD.  _ No one will expect you to be a hero, _ he’d said,  _ just a good agent. Me, I want you to just concentrate on being a good man, and the rest’ll come natural.  _

“I never felt like a hero, either, Nick. You know that. Hated it when they called me that. Real heroes would have… have…”

“Kept the bomb from going off?” Nick asked him. “Saved everybody? Come on, Coulson.”

“No,” Phil said, “no one could do that. They… I don’t know. I just felt like I was flailing, all the time.”

“We all flail most of the time, Phil.”

“I suppose so. But… I look at Clint, at Natasha. And they just… they make it look easy. The choices they make are just… they’re… they have no idea how many people would never have… oh.”

Oh. 

“Yeah,” Nick sighed. “Neither of them would call themselves heroes, and yet. What the hell am I supposed to do with those two, Phil? I can’t let anyone else get ‘em, they’d ruin them. I can only-- hello.”

“Hi,” Clint said, from the doorway. His hand was still on the knob, and he was looking at Nick with a frustration on his face that Phil didn’t quite understand. “You’re still here.”

“Just wrapping up,” Phil said. “Can I help you with something?”

“Um,” Clint said, “maybe. I wanted to see if, uh, I could get a ride. Um. Woo’s just levelled up, now that Jas is off doing his Hub thing. Figured you’d be going? Unless you’re too tired, since we haven’t really had time to decompress and all.”

He was flat-out side-eyeing Fury now. 

“Subtle you are not, Clint,” Nick told him, amused. 

“If you wanted subtle, you should’ve told me before,” Clint replied. “It’s a different skillset, and I left the knock-out gas grenades back in my room.” 

Nick grinned at him, only a very little wolfish, barely canine at all, and Phil ducked his head to hide the sudden, absurd surge of pride. He must be tired; he kept losing all control of his heart.

Clint was right. It was time to go home.

“I better put in an appearance,” Phil said, and stood up. “And yeah, I’ve got room for one more.”

“Have fun, kids,” Nick said, showing no inclination to get up. Phil rolled his eyes and shut his own office door behind his director, as Clint hovered at his side, laughing quietly.

\---

Nick Fury stayed motionless for about forty-five seconds after Phil and Clint left. Then he got up and began slowly sorting through the piles of papers on the desk, sliding some into the out trays, signing others, and tossing a few into the trash. 

He was frowning down at a counterintel circular as he said:

“You can come down any time, you know.”

Natasha carefully popped the ceiling tile out of its grid and dropped down into the office. He was still not watching her, and she fought the urge to grab him under the chin and make him look up.

“I am not a hero,” she said, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “In fact, I’m not sure what a hero is, beyond someone who dies when they could have lived.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Fury sighed, and opened Phil’s file drawers. “I don’t need you dying on me anytime soon, and you’re not wrong: trying to be a hero is a quick shortcut to a dirt nap. But you are, you know.”

Irritation prickled up her spine; of all the things about her Director that confused her, this tendency of his to be perversely idealistic on occasions was one of the biggest. Only a fool or a liar would have called her a her a hero, and he was definitely not the former. The latter he likely was from time to time, but until now his lies had always been plausible.

“What makes you say that?” she asked. “You and Coulson. I understand when you say it about Barton, and I might believe it about Coulson.” In fact… if she had to guess, she’d have guessed that once upon a time many people had used the term about him. “But I’m an assassin who once killed children.”

“Other children,” Fury said, brushing away her attempt to shock him. “And what have you done since then, Natalia Alianovna Romanova? Since you figured out what it was you were doing and who you were working for?”

“Only what I had to,” Natasha said. It had seemed terribly obvious to her-- and she could have sworn it had seemed obvious to Clint and to Phil and to Fury as well, for all that some of them had other reasons for distrust. 

“Right. Instead of running off to hide, make a new life on a beach somewhere, instead of hiring yourself out to the first organization with the capacity to keep you safe, instead of getting yourself a sugar daddy or something, you single-handedly took down the Red Room, Natasha.”

“It was already rotting,” Natasha protested. “I only gave it the final push. I have been honest with you about this.”

“You have indeed,” Fury told her, finally looking up from his filing. He’d managed to deal with the most architecturally unsound of Phil’s piles as they talked. Now, he leaned against the open drawer, and smiled at her. “And that’s another startling thing, Natasha. For someone with your background, you’ve been shockingly honest the whole way through.”

“That is only common sense,” she said. 

“That requires courage,” Fury replied. “And a very delicate conscience. And that’s what I mean, and what Phil saw too.”

“My--” Of all the times Natasha had felt like she’d been sent into zero gravity since she’d joined SHIELD, this had to be the most vertiginous. “My conscience? My  _ conscience? _ ”

“Why do you think I decided to keep you, anyway? It wasn’t your espionage skills-- okay, it wasn’t only your espionage skills-- it was the fact that you flat-out refused to join until you knew how I was going to treat Clint Barton. The guy you’d left in the lurch, the guy who’d jumped off a building to save you against protocol, and hey, you’d give it all up if I wasn’t gonna be fair to the guy. Goddamn, Romanoff, for a superspy you can be slow on the uptake once in awhile.” Fury shook his head at her, coming around to lean on the desk and looking disturbingly earnest. “All this time, all the damn talking you and I’ve done, that’s what I’ve been trying to get through to you.  _ That _ is what I want you to bring to this agency of mine.”

“That wasn’t… that was merely… if you treated him well, you were more likely to treat me well.”

“You’re not helping your side of the argument, Natasha. Sure, you can be selfish. But I notice that you were being selfish in not signing on till you knew that you were going to be treated like a human, with opinions, and not a tool to be broken and tossed.”

“I think this is true of many people at SHIELD, though,” Natasha said. “Certainly of Agents May, and Sitwell, and Bobbi Morse. It’s true of Doctor Heilman and Doctor Garner. This doesn’t explain why you decided Barton and I are special.”

“You and Barton and Coulson,” Fury corrected her. He’d moved on to the pile on the visitor’s chair, coming close to Natasha in order to reach it. “There’s having a conscience, and then there’s having a need to do things right so deep you don’t even notice you’ve got it. I’ve sat down with all three of you and watched you come up short on simple questions like ‘why did you save her’ and ‘why did you care’ like you didn’t think I was speaking English. 

“Coulson, at least, understands how to say ‘because it was the right thing to do.’ That’s why he’s on your team, and not anyone else in SHIELD. I’ve got a hell of a lot of good agents, but none quite like him. Especially not now that you and Barton have started to unearth the parts of him he thinks he lost in the war. Blood brothers, good God.”

“It’s…” 

“Awkward as fuck is what it is, Natasha. SHIELD’s better than, say, your old employers, or a lot of the other alphabet agencies. At least I try damn hard to make it be. But even so, SHIELD is hard on the conscience.” 

“So is life,” Natasha sighed, resigning herself to being praised for qualities she could not recognize in herself. She’d decide later why she was so uncomfortable with the fact that the Director trusted her this way, and so quickly.

“Yeah it is, and that’s why you and Barton need each other, and why Phil needs you both. Sometimes?” Fury closed the last file drawer with a shove, and turned back to her, “sometimes you will not fit in. Even worse than you don’t right now. And it won’t be because you’re super moral, or holier than thou or any bullshit like that. It’ll be because you know where your lines are with an incredible-- and I suspect hard-won-- clarity. And when that happens, I want you to have each other to count on. Because you might not be able to count on my organization, much as it pains me to say.”

“I like SHIELD,” Natasha said, and found it was true as she said it. “I trust them. You.”

“I know,” Fury said. “But like I told Phil, SHIELD’s a spy organization, and sometimes you can drown in shades of gray. One of these days-- and I admit I’m not convinced I’m not crazy for thinking it-- one of these days I think we’re gonna need a different kind of team, one that’s got a sense of right as extreme as its skillset.”

That fit Clint and Phil all right, at least now that they’d seemingly sorted out some of their issues. (Or if they hadn’t, at least stopped smearing them all over Natasha’s space.) But for herself...

“I’m not sure I can be that kind of person for you,” Natasha said. 

“I know you aren’t sure,” Fury told her. “But I am.” 

He let her stew in silence for a few moments as he started tucking Phil’s belongings back into his go-bag, zipping it neatly and setting it by the door to the office. Then he opened the door, and waved his hand in invitation. Natasha walked through in front of him.

“Go rest,” he told her kindly. “While you still can.”

Natasha did. Or at least, Natasha intended to. When she opened the door to her room, something crunched beneath her foot. It was, she realized as she picked it up, the jewel case for a CD. The disc inside it was hand-written, and scrawled on it was:

“Nat’s mix” in Clint’s chicken scratch.

She found herself smiling as she went inside, already opening the case.

\---

Phil hadn’t realized it was so close to fully dark, he told Clint as they meandered down the block under a fading twilight. It wasn’t that he hadn’t known that it was getting late, he just hadn’t really noticed. 

“Eh,” Clint said, trying to act like the confession was no big deal, “you’re still turned around from Mazatlan. Shoulda been home hours ago, sleeping it off.”

“Then why’d you invite me out to Woo’s celebration?” Phil asked, sounding more tired than intrigued.

Clint debated with himself a moment, because there were a lot of true responses to that, like “you always make everyone else go to these things” and “I don’t wanna show up solo,” but when it came down to it, those weren’t entirely honest. And it’d turned real hard, suddenly, to be dishonest with Phil, whether it was because of the lingering Phillip of him, or because once you’ve nearly torn each other apart with memories, it gets harder to lie.

“‘Cause Fury still had you in your office and I knew you were tired,” he said, looking away so he didn’t have to see how Phil took it. 

He was surprised, actually, that Phil hadn’t begged off the moment they’d left his office, the way Clint had thought he would. Surprised, too, that Phil had suggested they walk instead of taking his car, pointing out the lack of street parking in front of the bar. 

“Well, I appreciate it,” Phil sighed.

“Why’d Fury corner you anyway?”

“Oh,” Phil said, “we were talking about you.” 

After about a half-second pause, he appeared to realize what he’d said, opened his mouth to add something, and shut it. 

“Me?” Clint asked, ice flashing through his stomach. “What about me?” 

He pushed down the momentary dread of being disciplined or, worse, shitcanned. There was no rational reason for it, not when Fury’d sat down with him not two hours ago, taken a long look at him, and said “see now, I knew you had it in you.”

What “it” was, Clint hadn’t really known or wanted to ask, but it’d sounded approving, and Fury’d followed it up with a pretty generous debrief. So no, it wasn’t rational to assume Fury had gone to Phil to talk about how awful an agent Clint Barton really was. Of course, that left a whole entire host of options Clint hoped Fury wasn’t asking about.

“It’s nothing bad,” Phil told him, “or-- well. He just asked me if we’d cleared the air, you and me.”

“He, ah, did?” 

“I told him… I told him I’d told you about Manshour Abdul-Raulf finally, like he’d suggested.” Phil was looking down at his feet, and he shrugged now. “The rest of it wasn’t really his business.”

“No,” Clint said quietly, “thank you. I… would really prefer we keep that whole shit heap just us.”

“Of course,” Phil said, his head darting up till he could look square at Clint. “I wouldn’t say anything. I… appreciate the confidence. Especially since….”

“Eh,” Clint said, trying to cut him off, “it was just a….”

Nope, no good, the whole “be honest with Phil” thing was still choking off his attempt to save face for them both.

“... it was something I needed badly to do. So, thank  _ you _ ,” he finished instead. Their leisurely stroll down the street, which had felt refreshingly casual up until a moment ago, suddenly seemed to be dragging long and long.

“I... let’s just say I’m kind of blown away that you trusted me with it at all,” Phil told him, sounding hesitant himself. “You didn’t… I didn’t expect that.”

“Shouldn’t I trust you?” Clint asked him, trying to get at whatever was making Phil stutter. Maybe he should’ve left it alone, but the thought of adding more secrets to the pile they’d just spent so much time mucking out left him tired. “Thought you said we’d cleared everything up?”

“We--” Okay, what the fuck; Phil Coulson was blushing. The light might be almost gone, but Clint could  _ see _ . What the fuck did that mean? Given what they’d just put each other through, what the hell was he thinking they’d left behind?

“We cleared  _ that _ up,” Phil said at least, and maybe he was suffering from a radical inability to lie too, because he followed it up with, “and I suppose that’s the important part.”

Which implied there were other parts, and what they could be Clint wasn’t sure. They’d covered Jasper (they agreed on Jasper), they’d never really had issues over Natasha, and it wasn’t like Phil had Clint’s problems with remembering Miam….

Oh. 

Well.

Clint nearly slapped himself on the forehead.

What  _ had _ finally destroyed all Phil’s calm during that awful fight in medical? 

Phil’s voice, screaming “Chris” over comms, that didn’t actually fit in with the Manshour thing so well. Like  _ fuck _ Phil didn’t have some of Clint’s problems remembering Miami. And not problems like “what’s the proper etiquette for acknowledging that when you last met someone you spent a week fucking their brains out in every position you could manage” either.

Clint should leave it, he decided. They’d just managed to gain equilibrium over the secret connection between them that Clint  _ hadn’t _ known about. Why bring this shit up? Wasn’t like Clint himself had been more, uh, sharing.

“So what you’re telling me is Miami’s not important?” Clint asked, and then bit his lip.

Aw, honesty,  _ no _ .

“I--” Phil stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, just a half block from the bar, and turned to stare at Clint, like he’d just grown antlers or something. After a moment’s struggle, Phil shook his head. “I never said  _ that _ .”

No. No he never had. He’d said the sex wasn’t a problem, the sex was  _ fine _ , the…

“Oh,” Clint said, enlightened, “so it was a little about the sex after all, huh?”

And then he winced, because he was pretty sure it was the stupidest, most ill-considered thing he’d ever asked in his life, and there went any chance of a decent working relationship with Phillip Coulson, who was gonna shut him down any moment now and--

“It, um, it was… it was a little to do with the sex, yes,” Phil said. When Clint turned wide eyes on him, he just shrugged.  _ Radical candor, what ya gonna do? _

Clint considered, and did so long enough that Phil shrugged again and kept walking. He was nearly to the door before Clint found his voice, and said the exact opposite of what his brain was telling him to say.

“Me too,” was what he said. Phil stopped again and looked back at him, startled. “I mean,” Clint clarified, just to make it worse, “it was a little about the sex for me, too.”

They stood there, staring at each other in the mostly-dark, for at least a minute, and Clint hoped Phil was having as hard a time reading his face as he was reading Phil’s. It didn’t seem mad, or ashamed, just uncertain.

They didn’t really need more uncertain in their lives right now, not with Strike Team Delta finally working and all, and anyway… well, anyway, it wasn’t like Phil would’ve meant it was about sex with Clint Barton, it was about the sex he’d had, years ago now, with this kid Chris. Who just happened to be Clint, but that wasn’t….

“Shall we go in?” Phil asked finally, pointing to the door, and Clint nodded. Yeah, the rest of that was just best left put down, wasn’t it?

“Lead the way,” Clint said, and followed him inside.

And he didn’t stare at Phillip Coulson’s ass  _ once _ as he went. 

Not.

Once.

\---

END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: In this chapter, Clint goes into detail about the conditions in the nursing home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Includes descriptions of people dying and... look, it's just graphic.
> 
> The next story in the series, "Clint," will have an M rating for reasons NOT related to natural disasters-- or possibly an E rating, even. Given the history of this series I'm not going to tempt fate by even suggesting a possible posting date but I promise it will happen.
> 
> Acknowledgements and further reading:  
> This story has been years in the researching and writing, because I wanted to make sure to do Phil and Clint's stories right, given their content.  
> I'd been hoping to post some of the resources I used most here for anyone interested, but the internet has done that thing it does, and some of the best links are now unusable. However, I can still cite them. 
> 
> My biggest source for how Hurricane Katrina went down was Dan Swenson's "Anatomy of a Flood" interactive graphic at the Times-Picayune. The graphic appears to be gone, though its [webpage](http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/katrina_flooding_map.html) is still up. There's a wealth of books and reports on PTSD and the experiences of soldiers coming home from Afghanistan, but one that I think is fairly unique is the interview Andrew Sullivan did with Mikey Piro on the [Dish.](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/deepdish/podcasts/ep01-mikey-piro/) It is comprehensive, extraordinary, heartbreaking, and contains a fascinating exchange where they compare their experiences as survivors of PTSD and of AIDS. It is also no longer up, although ~~I believe you can still find it on iTunes, if you can find the Dish's stream~~ you can still find a copy [here](http://feeds.feedburner.com/thedish-aaa). In its absence, I'd point you to Piro's blog, [PTSD Survivor Daily.](http://ptsdsurvivordaily.com/) Phil's story, like Clint's, is not based on a particular person or place. Like Clint's, though, there are many real people with similar stories.

**Author's Note:**

> Soundtrack provided by:  
> Stephen Malkmus-- Gardenia; Lady Gaga-- Just Dance; David Byrne and Brian Eno-- Strange Overtones; Dragonette-- Take It Like A Man
> 
> Trigger warnings for: offscreen suicide attempts (remembered), PTSD offscreen and on, altered memories from the Red Room, graphic descriptions of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, graphic descriptions of the aftermath of a bombing, and descriptions of triage for the wounded and dying. These are presented as dialogue between two characters recalling past trauma as a way to heal. 
> 
> Talk to me, please! I love and adore comments and read them over obsessively. Concrit is welcomed via ask on my [tumblr](http://kat-har.tumblr.com).


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